Depression Learning

What is the Effect of Caffeine on depression?

Caffeine is a mild stimulant; it does not necessarily cause depression. However, if you are sensitive to caffeine, and you are already depressed, caffeine can make your depression symptoms worse. How caffeine makes depression worse, isn’t quite understood. Many doctors tell you to avoid caffeine, such as in coffee, soft drinks and chocolate. The reason for this is that when you first ingest caffeine, it gives you a little elevation in mood and energy. However, a few hours later, when the “high” from the caffeine wears off, you may experience a lack of energy, and even a bit depressed. It isn’t necessarily the caffeine that causes or worsens, but your body’s response to it.

Because caffeine is a stimulant, it has a host of side effects, which can influence depression symptoms. If you have been diagnosed with clinical depression, you may have been warned not to ingest too much caffeine, because of the side effects, which are restlessness, insomnia, irritability, and anxiety. As you may already know insomnia and anxiety are linked to depression. If you are a “pot drinker,” you may have some side effects associated with too much caffeine.

If you react to caffeine with insomnia, a few nights of not being able to sleep can seriously have an effect on your mood, because the biochemistry in your brain may have been affected. When your brain chemicals, serotonin and norepinephrine, get out of balance, you are likely to experience some depression symptoms, such as irritability, headaches, muscle tremors, anxiety, nausea, among other symptoms.

Soft drinks that contain caffeine are quite addictive, due to the sugar content. People who drink more than 3 sugary soft drinks per day that contain caffeine are just as susceptible to caffeine overdose as people who drink a pot or more of coffee per day. Too much caffeine causes a host of problems in the body, such as dehydration (from frequent urination), elevated blood pressure, fast heartbeat, muscle twitches, low blood glucose, as well as insomnia, anxiety and irritability. For some people, too much caffeine can lead to serious health problems, most of which can lead to depression symptoms.

Caffeine consumed with other foods may also affect the physiology of the body, which can inadvertently cause serious depression symptoms. For instance, if you are sensitive to caffeine, and you eat a grapefruit or drink a glass of grapefruit juice, the chemicals in the grapefruit and its juice can increase the caffeine levels in the blood by 33 percent, which can significantly increase your risk of developing symptoms of depression. If you continue to ingest caffeine on a regular basis, you may initially feel energized, and later your mind and body feels exhausted, which is due to the stimulant effect of caffeine. It is on the down side of the “high” that the mind and body feels the worst.

If you smoke cigarettes and ingest caffeine, you can significantly increase your heartbeat, and put your circulatory system under a strain due to increase cardiac output. Drinking too much coffee or soft drinks in a day can adversely affect the effects of depression drugs by raising your blood pressure, and thyroid problems. Too much caffeine may also damage some other organs indirectly by causing an increase in blood pressure.

It can be difficult giving up on all caffeine. If you know your limits, then enjoy your coffee and caffeine drinks in moderation. If you have a severe reaction to caffeine, such as muscle twitching, anxiety, irritability, then you might be one who needs to stay completely away from caffeine. If you are already diagnosed with major depression or dysthemia, you may need to avoid caffeine if it makes your depression symptoms worse.

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