The Caffeine Plot Twist (over 400 mg was healthier than 0 mg!?)

**Derek** (0:00)
A lot of people don't really think of stimulants as brain supporting, but there's been a lot of emerging literature on coffee. I think you were actually the one who tweeted the study about how upwards of the equivalent of like 500 to 600 milligrams of caffeine, I think from coffee, was, I think showed a greater benefit of health than like the equivalent of 200 to 300 milligrams of, I don't remember the exact caffeine amount, you could speak to it, but it was pretty surprising for like, a lot of people think, oh, if he passes 400 milligram threshold of caffeine equals bad. I think what a lot of people don't realize is that recommendation is based on a body weight multiplier of somebody who was like under 150, an average of like 150 pounds, I think, but that's neither here nor there. But as far as that coffee literature that you presented, I would love to hear just what it showed in terms of benefits, attributes, and like trying to disentangle, is it the caffeine or is it the other stuff from the coffee?

**Rhonda Patrick** (1:05)
It does seem as though there is a bit of a dose response, like going up to like three, even four cups of coffee a day, you have a stronger effect, like you're having more benefit from drinking the coffee.

**Derek** (1:20)
And notably the best or the highest yield of benefit in that study was a group drinking more than what would otherwise be the highest recommended dose by the FDA, if I recall correctly.

**Rhonda Patrick** (1:33)
Yeah, I mean, so, you know, people that are drinking three or four cups, four cups of coffee a day, I think that's a little bit higher, even up to five cups, actually.

**Derek** (1:42)
What would be a typical cup of coffee?

**Rhonda Patrick** (1:44)
So it's a loaded question, because it depends on so many factors, right? Like if you're making it at home, if you're going to Starbucks, if you're getting espresso, it could be anywhere between 200 milligrams to 400 milligrams. It really does depend a lot on where you're getting your source, right? Some beans, like Robusta beans, have more caffeine. Some people make very strong coffee. Starbucks makes very strong coffee. A lot of people go to Starbucks to get their coffee.

**Derek** (2:11)
By the way, how crazy is it that you don't have to state on the Starbucks anything how much caffeine it is? In energy drinks, it's super specific. Here's the exact milligram amount, and you have to be like plus minus like 10 percent. But in coffee, it's like the variability is... I don't know if I saw it from you or somebody else, but there was like a study where the... Even going to the same Starbucks on different days, it was the shift of like hundreds of milligrams of caffeine.

**Rhonda Patrick** (2:41)
Totally. I mean, and that's why some of these studies... And the same goes with like when I read the alcohol literature, I'm like, what's a standard drink? Like it's how much alcohol is in a beer versus like a glass of wine, right?
There's so much variation there. And so you kind of have to take it with a grain of salt because at the end of the day, these studies refer to a cup of coffee often. You'll sometimes get studies looking at milligrams, especially if they're doing, if it's not coffee, but they're actually doing like caffeine, just caffeine. And so, you know, it's kind of hard to go, well, okay, four cups. Well, how much caffeine is that? Like, you know what I mean? So there is a little bit of wiggle room here where you kind of have to interpret like the caffeine amount. Now, you're asking about caffeine versus like decaf, right? And that is something that has been looked at. So these polyphenols, like the chlorogenic acids, they have benefits, you know, in and of themselves. And I will say, like, if we're looking at all-cause mortality and we're looking at cardiovascular mortality, it does seem that both decaffeinated and caffeinated coffee have similar benefits. I would say the caffeine may be a little bit more robust. And in fact, if we go a step further and we look at what I would say more biological age, you know, so there have been studies, some large studies, that have looked at people drinking coffee. Now, they didn't separate decaf from this, so it's definitely, you know, caffeinated coffee. And we look at what's called their epigenetic aging clocks without going into too much detail here. They're just essentially looking at patterns of what are called methylation groups that are kind of sitting on top of different regions of their DNA, and these patterns kind of shift with age. And like based on that shifting pattern, researchers can kind of gauge a biological age there that might not be necessarily the same as their chronological age. And what's really important here is that large data sets are necessary to be accurate with this type of data. We're not talking about a one person doing a test on themselves. We're talking about you're looking at a signal to noise ratio. You need large sample number. You need large data sets to actually be more accurate with this kind of age and clock data, which is why I'm not super bullish on doing age and clocks myself. But anyways, that's a whole other... Have you done one? Yes, I have. But let me continue on before going off on that tangent. Coffee does shift the age and clocks by a few weeks. So it's not much, but it's something.