Too Much Coffee

Victoria wrote:Hello, my name is Victoria and I need your help! My daughter is doing a science project and we were wondering if there are any Web sites that would tell us more about the affects coffee does to blood pressure. I know of one Web site that was a little helpful. It stated that coffee regular or decaf have little to no affect on blood pressure . I was wondering if you could give me about 10 Web sites if you have them this would be so helppful to the both of us.

This request dropped in the "Admin" mailbox a little earlier today. If anyone has any info to contribute, please will they do so?

BTW - personal experience - this year, before my annual health check, I had 3 double espresso shots. I also erred slightly with the grind, an so they were a little longer than usual and therefore contained a little more caffeine than usual.

To my annoyance, the doctor decided to take my blood pressure as well as checking my asthma symptoms, which is what the appointment was for IMO. My blood pressure was 178 / 114 or thereabouts, which scared the doctor somewhat. He sent me for loads of tests including an ECG. On the day of the tests I didn't have any coffee and my b p was around 124 / 82 - pretty darned good. (Apart from the asthma I am fairly fit).

So I don't believe that there is no positive correlation between caffeine consumption and blood pressure!

Here are some pretty good links.

http://www.cosic.org/caffeine-and-behaviour/alertness
http://www.coffeescience.org/
http://www.positivelycoffee.org/home.aspx

I hope this helps .

Don't have any sites to contribute as age of child not known (although I assume,due to project topic that child is secondary school age)a quick google search produces a plethora of hits. It might be worth adding a rider to any links sent that sites have not necessarily been vetted for child safe content.

Own experience, consume vast quantities of coffee and have very low blood pressure.

Don't know if this helps but I have been monitoring my bp for quite some time now and there is a tangible link between bp and caffiene intake - perhaps via heart rate or is that an old wives tale? - but I beleive it is largely short term unlike with sodium
More problematic is the potassium level in coffee - as kidney function decays one of the first things to go is the ability to remove potassium from the body. The first step in counteracting this is a low potassium diet and that involves limiting coffee intake.
HB