The Truth About Caffeine

This is the first Audible book that I have listened to.

The performance was very professional and I was quite pleased with both the quality of the recording and the performance.

The information was, in a word, frightening. Who knew that caffeine was so deadly. The argument was well thought out but a little heavy with the scientific terms.

Overall, I was quite pleased with both the content and the performance. Good job.

I found The Truth About Caffeine to be highly informative. Not only is caffeine addictive, but it is also detrimental to your health. I can personally attest to that fact. A few years ago, I had a cancer scare and had a 4” lump removed from one of my breasts. After that, whenever I had caffeine, the spot where I’d had surgery would burn and felt uncomfortable. It only happened when I had caffeine. After I stopped taking in caffeine, the burning sensation stopped. I found caffeine also causes vertigo and hypoglycemia of which I suffered from both. The book clearly explains both these instances. I urge everyone to read this book. Your body will thank you. <Anna Phegley aka Raine Hollister Author>

I just got through talking to a local Poison Control director for research. Why? Because caffeine poisoning and reactions and concerns about caffeine have prompted many parents, teens and others to call these centers with symptoms that go beyond the usual jittery nerves and buzz of normal caffeine drinkers.

To be honest, I enjoy a daily cup of coffee as much as many people. I'm not a purist and I haven't sworn off caffeine or drinks that contain it. But the scary reality is also that products like potato chips, breath mints and some energy drinks contain as much caffeine as 2 cups of coffee! Potato chips?! Yes, you read that right.

Now imagine this: an unwitting teen or child or even a toddler chugs an energy drink or swallows some breath mints, following that with those high energy potato chips. Without eating or drinking another thing, that person could have high levels of caffeine in his system. With recent reports linking caffeine to higher rates of miscarriage, perhaps it is time to think about what caffeine can do to developing teens and children.

There is no regulation of these products. This book can tell you a bit more about the dangers of caffeine and how and why people might want to think about which foods and drinks and candies contain caffeine.

Again, I'm no purist. But the facts about poison control centers and increased caffeine poisonings are real. People are reacting to caffeine more often. I don't know if they are INTENTIONALLY taking in large amounts of caffeine or simply don't realize that some over the counter meds, breath mints, jelly beans, energy drinks and..yes. even potato chips can contain caffeine. But I tend to think that increased awareness is a good thing. Now you know.

This book will reveal what you can do about the amount of caffeine you injest, how to go through caffeine withdrawal or cut back (if you want)...and more.

This book is full of great information and explains the underlying causes of many health problems caused by caffeine. It was very informative and I learned a lot about adrenal fatigue I did not know before, I would advise anyone who cannot figure out what is wrong with them to read this book. It also provides a plan to improve adrenal function.

I thought this was a very informative book! I had no idea the foods that were infected with caffeine! Of course everyone knows about the obvious culprits of caffeine, but I had no idea it could be found in so many other places! It makes me even more relieved that caffeine addiction has never been something I've struggled with, but I can see why many people do. Good read! The author did her research!

I knew caffeine was addictive and was habit forming, especially for most people in the morning. This is a book that helps you understand the specifics about caffeine addiction and the body. I recommend this book, if you never realized the harms and, particularly, if you have health risks. It is clear caffeine can contribute to them and the information in this book could at least help you kick the caffeine habit or at least reduce your intake.

I recently started drinking caffeine, but after reading such an informative book, I decided to toss the idea of drinking coffee aside. I didn't realize that caffeine is like a nicotine that can become very addictive. I have never smoke in my life nor have I ever been addicted to anything, and at 32 years old it is not the time to start. Thanks for such an informative read!

The Truth about caffeine is quite informative. The author covers everything from the addiction of this substance, to the diseases attributed to excessive caffeine consumption. Everything you've ever wanted to know about caffeine is covered by Ms. Kushner. Check it out, you won't be disappointed.

This book was very informative. I learned a lot about caffeine I didn't know. Easy to understand and has swayed the way I see my own caffeine use. Though I drink only one cups day, it can still be harmful. Thank you for the information.

This book brings to light a very real danger that our society faces - addiction to caffeine. When you think about addiction, most people don't even consider caffeine as a potential problem. It's everywhere. Just a little "pick-me-up" whenever you need it. That may be why it is so important that people be aware of the health problems that are associated with caffeine overload. This audio book attempts to bring those issues to the forefront. Anyone who is concerned about their health can benefit from listening to this audiobook. The statistics alone are enough to convince me that caffeine should not be a part of my diet.

Fascinating info about our favorite drug

The book covers everything caffeinated. You will never look at your cup of coffee, tea, chocolate bar or energy drink/soda the same way again. A real eye-opener!

Five Stars! This is so important to hear. The Truth about Caffeine really layds it bare. It has conclusive evidence that is being suppressed. This is an important book to buy! I listened to the Audible version, which really captures your attention and tells the truth about this highly addictive substance. Great work and research. I highly reccommend this!

Couldn't be more timely. While most pundits can't have enough to say about the "health benefits" of caffeine, Kushner isn't afraid to tell it how it really is. Sure, her message will be met with resistance... but you NEED to hear it.

Why? Because caffeine isn't a harmless pick-me-up like everyone thinks. And, chances are, you're drinking far too much of it. Check it out and see if you display any of the symptoms she talks about. You might be shocked to learn how dangerous long-term caffeine intake can be.

I have suffered from adrenal fatigue for years, and now I discovered it came from my caffeine consumption. With the solid guidance that this book offers I don't regret spending the money for it. I would have paid hundreds of dollars on doctor's visits and medication, but this book saved me from doing that. I'm so glad my physician recommended it to me. Thank you!

A very informative and well documented read. If you are a coffee drinker or consume caffeine in other drinks and food, you will want to read to be informed of the medical effects. Also important for parents and pregnant women or women considering having children to read.

I gave up coffee completely three years ago (having been a 4 or 5 cup-a-day man) but not on these grounds, on the grounds of an

excess of stomach problems. Coffee definitely aggravated these in me, and nowadays I never drink it.

The two times I gave up coffee cold turkey I had awful headaches. I wonder if gradual reduction in caffeine would bypass the headaches. I haven't had any caffeine since starting Atkins and I'm afraid to have any now -- those headaches just aren't worth it.

Reading the description of withdrawal and personal experience

demonstrates that the caffeine withdrawal is more pronounced with caffeine than with marijuana. Myself has never noticed anything that I would consider any withdrawal from pot.

You can kick coffee by easing off slowly. Kushner has a regimen that works to minimize the headaches. I found a great coffee substitute in her book that tasted just like coffee. It even helped me lower my cholesterol. Those caffeine headaches can be brutal.

If headaches persist for more than a week after quitting, or you need something stronger to relieve headache, ask a doctor. There are specialist headache doctors that can help. It might be something else complicating things.

Again, this is not really necessary...it's well-known that

caffeine-withdrawal headaches can last up to a whole month.

The author almost shouts in your face Caffeine is a deadly substance that can easily kill you. To support it she uses authors and researchers who don't have nor will have soon conclusive evidences that there is something more than higher risk for this or that to happen to you. I guess that whatever you eat or drink may put at higher risk for some unpleasant health problem.

If you drink more than 1-2 cups of coffee per day then the advice is at least to reduce it because the risk is getting significant. Otherwise, the author does NOT present any studies that support the presumption that a cup of coffee even if you drink it every day will have a devastating effect on your health. Kushner's book mostly follows historical and neurological approach to caffeine. It was not very interesting to read who, when and what has to do with coffee and caffeine through out the history.

That was followed by an aggressive propaganda to forget about coffee once and forever. Everyone should know that moderation is very important and going overboard regardless of substance or activity will be bad for you. It is good that she raises awareness that huge consumption of caffeine is not good for your health but you definitely don't need to go through 200 pages just to come up with the same conclusion. I don't see something very significant or new in this book to justify many people all over this site to recommend it. This overly zealous marketing without any care for relevancy reminds me of her overly zealous efforts to convince you immediately to stop drinking coffee. I cannot support any of these 2 things.

I came across this book in my search for scientific material on the use of coffee in my personal diet. Unfortunately, it contains little scientific material (though such material is loosely referenced in the book and used in the bibliography). Let's start at the top. While the foreword is written by a doctor Navleen Kaur that focuses the discussion on caffeine, the majority of the book is about coffee drinks and soft drinks. That makes sense given that the US is evidently the largest consumer in the world of both, per capita; however, it highlights a major weakness of the book--it confuses caffeine consumption and the consumption of drinks that contain caffeine.

That may seem like a small sin but it's not. In my research on coffee (again, solely for my personal benefit to find out whether I should drink it), I made liberal use of medical and scientific journal papers (an excellent collection of perhaps the best, peer-review articles on the subject is on the National Institute of Mental Health site, http://www.nimh.nih.gov/index.shtml--the world's largest collection of scientific articles on mental and physical health). If one types in 'coffee' versus 'caffeine' on the nimh website, one finds two completely distinct lines of research, for good reason. In the last decade, researchers have "corrected" earlier scientific approaches to studying caffeine, which often assumed caffeine was the primary active ingredient in coffee (and hence, studying coffee was the same as studying caffeine)--it's not.

Chlorogenic acid (CGA, along with compounds of nearly 200 other chemicals) is the primary, active ingredient in coffee and it's effects when combined with caffeine are still not completely understood but are MOSTLY POSITIVE. Apart from confusing coffee and caffeine, those early studies would also do things like compare the health and welfare of coffee-drinkers with non-coffee drinkers, after the fact; oftentimes, forgetting to control for the fact that many coffee drinkers are also smokers and possessors of other bad health habits (who also typically use lots of sugar, non-organic milk and other additives in their coffee).

In the new generation of research on coffee, however, they administer coffee (sometimes green, sometimes filtered, sometimes unfiltered, depending upon the study) to control and study groups and see what happens, usually at a molecular level. The findings confirm what many have said for years: organic coffee when lightly roasted (at 170 degrees for 12 minutes) or green, taken without sugar at 3 cups or less per day, reduces the risk of type II diabetes (as well as its symptoms), Alzheimer's, heart disease and yes, even hypertension--one of the main evils that Ms. Kushner says caffeine brings about in her book.

By contrast, the research on purely caffeine is mixed. As you might guess, it depends upon the source of the caffeine. Few would argue that consuming caffeine via soft drinks is less healthy than consuming it via green or even black tea. Ms. Kushner does not seem to make this distinction. Nonetheless, the real issue is that when we consume any chemical compound, it is the compound itself that we are concerned about--not merely a single chemical. As I said, CGA with caffeine produces incredible benefits (though some effects, as I said, are not clearly understood) while caffeine by itself, Ms. Kushner is correct, is an addictive drug. Yet, by the same token arsenic is generally a deadly substance that we also see naturally occur in many fruits and vegetables (because of its presence in ground water and soil). In combination with other substances, however, arsenic produces health benefits--such as in grape juice. The point is that when drinking a chemical compound of anything it all depends upon the compound, when we drink it and how we drink it or consume it, and it is this conditional element to the caffeine story that Ms. Kushner ignores in the book entirely.

Given that research setting, let's look again at the foreword by Dr Naur. First, she cites two studies--one from 2001, one from 1993--both far outside the "corrected" window for caffeine/coffee research over the last decade. Second, she focuses purely on caffeine without the disclaimers I just noted. Moreover, she makes misleading statements. For example, she says that consuming more than 1000 mg of caffeine can bring about a myriad of problems, such as vomiting, nausea, etc. However, she does not put this into context. Your average cup of coffee contains only 95mg of caffeine; hence, one needs to drink MORE THAN 10 and a half cups of coffee (according to Dr Naur) to see these symptoms. I submit that consuming more than 10.5 cups of anything but water in a day could cause you some problems. Prune juice, for example, bothers me at only one cup! The point is that the foreword is misleading and sets up the author for an even more misleading treatise on the dangers of primarily coffee-drinks.

Getting into the book, the author begins with the usual indictments about how much we drink, etc., using averages instead of specific group breakdowns (a big no-no in science). The average person may drink 5 cups of coffee per day, but that means some may drink 20 and others none. The statistics on various caffeine containing drinks in this way are then muddled, which is why I say, it is primarily a book about coffee. However, instead of citing the evidence that we have seen develop in coffee research (or at least caffeine research) the author talks about caffeine and coffee almost interchangeably (and not in a well written fashion). Moreover, rather than lean on the science, she fills the book with references to causes and government-like entities that condemn caffeine (e.g., the appendix is filled with 30 pages of certificates from local governments that condemn caffeine along with addresses of dozens of organizations). There is little value that I can find in this, except for spin factor. It also makes the reader believe that what she is saying is only believable if some official has endorsed it. However, that's strange: the whole premise of the book, evidently, is that there is some conspiracy to get people to drink caffeine (which, by the way, is not proven at all in the text).

From there it goes further downhill. In Chapter 2 the author writes explicitly about coffee (not caffeine, like the title we bought). Then (surprise) we read about caffeine and coffee--again, bereft of recent scientific findings that separate the two. Chapters 4 and 5 then offer us the type of filler material we've come to expect today from authors of books for people who don't like to read books. Some historical story meant to stick out in our minds about the "enemy's drink" and then some specific and speculative discussion about how caffeine is specifically bad for women (again, focusing on coffee and not even honestly pointing out that it is DEcaffeinated coffee that presents the biggest danger to women in the form of fibrous development related to breast and cervical cancer. To me, this is almost dangerous as it is misleading!

By the middle of the book, the reader is out of energy, but we're still plowing forward with the author making the same point: caffeine is evil, with no upside. Chapter 7 on Caffeine and heart disease really should be reviewed by some experts, as it borders on misrepresentation of science. True, I doubt that one's life will decline in quality if one avoids caffeine; however, to suggest that caffeine is the heart disease culprit--both when science finds that coffee reduces heart disease risk and without considering the poor diet issues that relate directly to heart disease--is dishonest. Moreover, apart from the author seemingly ignoring science, she also ignores the historical fact that such an ancient drink must have had its benefits as seen by the billions who have drunk it over the millenia. Nope!

One other issue is worth noting. In lieu of caffeine-related drinks, the author, for some reason promotes soy. Yes, soy! Again, the reader is invited to do a search on nimh for soy and its effects and the reader will be horrified. Soy, unless fermented (which few soy milk beverages, if any, are) is linked to a myriad of neurological disorders! Unfermented soy is not only potentially unsafe for the nervous system, GMO soy is completely and unknown variable. Furthermore, unfermented soy is used as a preservative in most processed foods today, why? Because it does not break down easily. That means one's body cannot break it down easily.

I could go on but I think it would offer more justification than the book deserves. I wrote this much because I felt it was my duty to share how we can be completely misled by reading sensationalized books that misrepresent facts. In sum, if you are looking for a book with an honest, scientific take on caffeine and/or coffee in your diet, this is NOT the one. While I appreciate a book concerned with exposing the dark side of science, conspiracy within the medical profession, etc., this book doesn't do that in any convincing way. However, its best-selling nature is a testament to someone's PR abilities.

De-caf anyone? I already knew there were problems with excessive caffeine consumption before I read this, but I wasn't aware of all the effects by any means. I'm a one morning cup of coffee person these days, but when I worked as the media officer/speechwriter for a politician there was a never-ending mug of coffee on my desk always.

Ms Kushner shows great skill in writing in this, but it is the scientific facts behind her words that I find compelling. All of us who drink too much coffee or obtain our caffeine fix from other sources should read this book. Riveting reading!

~Marion Black~

This book along with Confessions of a Caffeine Addict is a lifesaver--literally. I went to a Naturopath who informed I was suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and adrenal fatigue. I was having muscle and joint pain, severe headaches and I was constantly tired. I been a longtime consumer of coffee and diet colas and never assumed it was the culprit. This book is wonderful. It is a no nonsense book and I can't think of anyone who wouldn't benefit from reading this book Get this book along with "Confessions of a Caffeine Addict" and you wont go wrong! Enjoy!