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A Personal Experiment with Coffee, Walking and Anxiety | posts | /2024/07/21/a-personal-experiment-with-coffee-walking-and-anxiety/ |
I noticed that in the last few weeks I've been pretty anxious. More so than my normal background level of anxiety. I realised that I've been drinking a lot more heavily caffeinated iced coffees and pepsi max recently. What's more, I was thinking back to a period earlier in the year when I was less anxious and remembered that it coincided with a health kick where Mrs R and I cut back a lot on Pepsi/fizzy drinks. I put two and two together and started thinking that caffeine is probably exacerbating my anxiety. This led me to try experimenting with coffee, walking and anxiety.
Caffeine and Walking vs Anxiety
A recent study found that 5 cups of coffee a day can induce panic attacks in patients prone to them. It also increases the background anxiety of people without a panic disorder too. That's about 400-500 mg caffeine. I worked out that if I drank 2-3 coffees a day plus 2-3 300ml cans of Pepsi, I'd probably be exceeding that range.
Also, through Doug Belshaw's blog I found a podcast episode by Dr Rangan Chaterjee recommending that people use the summer months to do a little detox. He suggests going for a daily 10-15 minute walk as soon as you wake up. Preferably without your phone and before you've had any tea or coffee. During the COVID lockdowns Mrs R and I were doing daily walks morning and evening. We found that it helped to keep us sane and to provide a transition between work and personal time whilst working from home 100% of the time. Thinking about this also felt like a minor revelation.
Personal Experiment
It felt like it was time for a personal experiment to see if I could reduce my anxiety. I'm trying out reducing my caffeine intake and doing daily walks to see if it helps my anxiety. I guess I could try doing one without the other to try to isolate the effect of each. On the other hand, both of these things have other advantages. Giving up diet pepsi and doing more exercise are both good for my general health. Therefore, I'm not too bothered as ideally I'd like to keep doing both anyway.
Since Monday 15th July I have been consuming a maximum of 3 caffeinated drinks per day. That's normally 1 coffee and 1-2 cans of pepsi a day. I've replaced my 2nd and 3rd coffee with decaf. I've also swapped out my pepsi for water or lemonade as a treat. I am also doing a 10-15 minute walk around the block as soon as I hop out of bed. I plan to try to do this every day for at least a month to see how it affects me.
Early Results
Monday morning was particularly bad. I had an intense dose of the sunday scaries and I had drunk lots of pepsi max the night before. I told Mrs R I might need to take a mental health day and nearly gave up on my experiment on day 1. However, she encouraged me to on a walk and it immediately took the edge off my anxiety. I had forgotten how pretty everything is first thing in the morning bathed in golden sunshine and birds tweeting. The air smelt clean and refreshing. I took a single morning coffee and as the day wore on and my sunday scaries subsided, I felt more relaxed. By about 4pm I had a really bad headache and felt tired which are classic caffeine withdrawal symptoms.
As the week has continued I've felt pretty good. I'm still getting anxious thoughts and having little worry episodes but they don't feel as acute or scary at the moment. I described this feeling to Mrs R as "they are lurking but they can't hurt me any more". It's only been a few days but things are feeling a lot more manageable and the overwhelmed feeling I get when I have a lot on at work has subsided a little.
Today (Sunday) I am feeling a little more anxious. I normally get the sunday scaries and start to think about all the emails waiting for me in my work inbox and all the stuff I want to achieve so that's pretty typical. What is unusual is that I am not feeling paralysed by my sunday scaries today. Quite often the feeling gets in my way and prevents me from doing or achieving much at all on a sunday but today it just feels like a bit of a niggle that's in the background if I stop what I'm doing. I really enjoyed my morning walk again today because the sun was out and I was up before the rest of the neighbourhood and it was lovely and peaceful.
Discussions Online
I posted about my experiment on Mastodon and found that a few others had similar experiences. Glyn chuckled when his timeline placed my post about cutting down coffee just below another tongue-in-cheek post about how doing that is a great way to reduce joy in your life. Obviously this is a pretty common thing.
Conclusion
So early signs are quite positive. I don't know if its placebo that will wear off or a combination of both the reduction in caffeine and the walking but I am feeling a fair bit better. I am trying to be realistic about the fact that anxiety won't completely go away like some kind of magical spell (and my experience today has confirmed that). However, even just having my anxieties numbed and "unable to hurt me" is a massive win.
Part of me is quite annoyed that I didn't try this sooner. I've been regularly drinking relatively high volumes of coffee for about 15 years and I'd say my anxiety probably started around the same sort of time. I really doubt that's a coincidence and it's such a smoking gun when I look back on it. However, hindsight is always 20:20 as they say.