Are the effects of caffiene different on aspies than NTs?

Post Reply New Topic

Yeah, I kinda feel like I can take a lot more caffeine to the face than most people can without feeling too jittery. Uppers tend to be rather friendly on my system.

Being on a lot of meds tends to do that. For me back when I was on 2 or 3 meds in highschool I was real flippy and brittle, even off just the slightest fluctuations of brain chemistry via diet or lack thereof. Really strange how they continued to think the meds I was on were actually helping me somehow...

Caffine causes about a half an hour of true mania for me then it helps me level out.

Recent research suggests that Caffeine improves concentration and short term memory. In the past I've found Caffeine made me a bit of a zombie (staring into space, like I'm in a trance). However more recently I appear to have developed a bit more of a tolerance to Caffeine and I find that coffee in particular makes me act more like other people (at least at work). I don't get as distracted am more motivated and confident.

I don't drink coffee, but when I do have caffeinated soda I think it just makes me urinate more. That's the only effect I've noticed.

Caffeine doesn't effect me. So I can drink coffee at 12am or later and still get to sleep easy.

i don't really feel anything from drinking caffeine

With me, everything but.



It seems like caffeine has vastly different effects on different people. For me, too much coffee or tea is a perfect recipe for acting weird and generally not feeling like my real self. I need to be calm inside and laid-back to be able to interact normally with people. That includes controlling my voice and what I say so that I don't speak in broken sentences, keeping up with the timing of a conversation, or gesturing in a more soft, natural way. Caffeine makes me cranky and that necessary calmness is no longer there. On the whole, I start feeling somehow different - it's a little like sliding back to where I was in my teens and losing whatever social skills I'd gained since then, apart from generally just not feeling right. Hate that feeling.

I'm highly sensitive to caffeine and have to be really careful with it. Sometimes I can only drink one cup in 24 hours because it makes me so jittery. It varies, though. sometimes I can comfortabley drink 4 cups with no problem. I'm on an SSRI so that may have something to do with it, I don't know.

Caffeine used to make me really alert and a bit jittery but now it doesn't do anything as far as I can tell.

Caffeine increases heartbeat, respiration, basal metabolic rate, gastroenteric reflexes, and the production of stomach acid and urine; and it relaxes smooth muscles, notably the bronchial muscle. All of these changes vary considerably among people and may depend upon the individual's sensitivity to this drug, his/her metabolism, or upon whether the consumer habitually uses or rarely uses caffeine. How long caffeine's effects last is influenced by the person's hormonal status, whether he/she smokes or takes medications, or has a disease that impairs liver functioning.

Subjectively, people report that caffeine gives them a "lift." They feel less drowsy, less fatigued, more capable of rapid and sustained intellectual effort. They also report improved performance of some manual tasks such as driving. However, caffeine may restore only those abilities or feelings the person had before fatigue or boredom set in. Studies have also shown that caffeine decreases reaction time to both visual and auditory stimuli; it does not significantly alter numerical reasoning (arithmetic skills) or short-term memory; and it can diminish performance of manual tasks that involve delicate muscular coordination and accurate timing.

When caffeine is taken in high doses it can cause many unwanted side effects. To learn more about these, please read "What are the symptoms of caffeine overdose?"

Since I don't think anyone reads link's I give caffeine is a Drug and like drugs it effects people in different ways.....

Overdose....

Doses ranging from 250 to 750 mg (2 to 7 cups of coffee or tablets of NoDoz) can produce restlessness, dizziness nausea, headache, tense muscles, sleep disturbances, and irregular heart beats. Doses of over 750 mg (7 cups of coffee) can produce all of the above as well as a reaction similar to an anxiety attack, including delirium, drowsiness, ringing ears, diarrhea, vomiting, light flashes, difficulty breathing, convulsions (extreme overdose). These amounts of caffeine may come from a single dose or from multiple doses at short intervals. Besides caffeine's effects, the essential oils of coffee may cause gastrointestinal irritation and diarrhea, and the high tannin content of tea can result in constipation.


Withdrawal Symptoms

Caffeine has the potential to produce tolerance, which means that increased amounts of the drug are needed to achieve a consistent effect. Withdrawal symptoms can occur when use of caffeine is stopped abruptly. Users may experience fatigue, and most commonly, headaches. Primary withdrawal effects last for only a few days though mild withdrawal effects can last as long as a week or two.


craving

tiredness, lethargy

confusion and inability to focus

headaches, which may not respond to painkillers, but may abate with the intake of caffeine

Coffee also makes me very hyper.

I agree with Corvus. I seem to develop tolerance to caffeine quite rapidly.

Once I was on vacation and every morning we went to this cafe to get some breakfast, and usually ended up getting some coffee. Since I hadn't been in the habit of drinking coffee, the first day I got nicely stimulated. However, by like the third or fourth day I decided to stop drinking it because I no longer felt the effect.

Interestingly, my dad doesn't like the wired feeling from drinking strong coffee, so when he does drink it he makes it kind of weak. At that strength it usually doesn't do much for me, in fact it sometimes makes me more blah. My mom dislikes anything with caffeine in it, as she can't stand the "buzz". That makes me the only one in the family to like the caffeine stimulation.

I would say "Instead of causing increased activity they actually have a calming effect because executive function (and hence self control) is improved."

Can't say that I've noticed anything in particular. but I do tend to drink a fair bit of Diet Coke, maybe focusing to see how it might affect me is something I can look at.

I'd agree, its more like filling in a perpetual sense of physical agitation caused by the brain telling the body that it has a deficiency (I'm not naturally ADHD but had akasthesia from being on antipsychotics, it took a year on ritalin to pound that dent back out). If people with ADHD were truely hyperactive it wouldn't be a problem at all, in fact they'd be the types of people who'd be able to be pro-athletes and politicians and musicians and even come home to trade stocks online - part of the meth epidemic in our country actually includes people who want to do it all but just don't have the time or energy.