Is caffeine bad for your heart???? Bad for running????

I bought an Apple Watch series 4 last year (first watch with an accurate EKG) it told me I was having Atrial Fib symptoms and to see a doctor, he had me wear a halter monitor and confirmed I was having Atrial Fib. I’m quite confident that drinking coffee is a trigger for me, anyone who has an abnormal rythm can have symptoms made way worse with coffee per my cardiologist. The bad thing is that a lot of people have AF and a lot of people don’t know they have it which can be lethal if you are in AF and go run after coffeeing up.

I drink like 6 cups a day but its mostly office coffee maybe actually finish close to 4.

I have a wrist HR monitor on. It's currently 42 as I type this, so no. My HR was 138 when I ran 12 miles this am.

And uranium.

You just gotta figure out what works for you. I am very sensitive to caffeine as relatively nominal amounts make me anxious, restless, and overall fatigued. If I drink a 12 oz cup from a coffee shop i’m a mess and my whole circadian rhythm is shot. If it’s something g I brew myself it’s not as bad but I really have to keep an eye my caffeine intake, as it also makes me feel bad on runs sometimes.

I spent 6 months in sweden, and came home hopelessly needing 4-5 cups of coffee a day, up from about my normal 2. But I've always been one to drink it in the morning, I've never had negative effects, and it doesn't cause me sleep problems. In fact, it helps, because on weekends I wake up early and have my coffee, whereas without coffee I would probably sleep in on the weekends, which means a lack of sleep on monday...

A 2012 New England Journal of Medicine analysis that included "5,148,760 person-years of follow-up" found an inverse relationship between coffee drinking and mortality. "As compared with men who did not drink coffee, men who drank 6 or more cups of coffee per day had a 10% lower risk of death, whereas women in this category of consumption had a 15% lower risk. "

Free, full text here:

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1112010

I have been drinking a massive amount of coffee and espresso for 20 years. I’m 43 and haven’t had any issues yet. It doesn’t seem to have any impact on my sleep or performance.

I would define my consumption as absurdly high. 4 cups at breakfast, 3-4 at lunch, and 3-4 throughout the day. 10-15 per day average.

Otq dreamer wrote:

I have been drinking a massive amount of coffee and espresso for 20 years. I’m 43 and haven’t had any issues yet. It doesn’t seem to have any impact on my sleep or performance.

I would define my consumption as absurdly high. 4 cups at breakfast, 3-4 at lunch, and 3-4 throughout the day. 10-15 per day average.

That is a lot. I don't have coffee after 2 or 3 because I think it does impact my sleep. I like to drink a couple of cups a day but I regularly go without it and I never feel sluggish or anything without the caffeine. If you drink it black you're probably fine.

Here is a 2006 paper -- it concludes that slow metabolizers are more at risk of MI.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/202502

I am the type where a 2nd cup of tea in the morning can keep me up at night, so I think that puts me in the slow metabolism category.

I also had a quite unexpected MI as I sprinted to the line to snag my first BQ in a race with several caffeinated GUs for nutrition.

Real or not, I'm laying off caffeinated drinks/GU for the foreseeable future..

Mitt the Plumber wrote:

Let's keep going: Pork fat is a natural substance, hence in no way damaging to your health.

Life would be pointless without pork fat.

There was this study done of a bunch of people that lived to be over 100 and their habits. The 3 commonalities were:

1. 1-3 cups of coffee per day

2. 1-3 servings of alcohol per day

3. 45 minutes of activity per day

Good god..

Had a heart attack en route to finishing for a BQ?! Blessings you survived to tell.

Ya know, I've been running in some capacity my whole life..been identifying more as a runner the last 7-8 years, I've run a dozen trail and road HM's, one road marathon, and I'll be honest, I can't see myself running many more road 26.2's. There is something about the pounding your body takes after the 30k mark, that for me, just doesn't add up. I really thought I'd catch the marathon bug, it just doesn't excite me though.

You hear more about cardiac events in road marathons vs trail ultra's, even at the 100-200 mile distance. I know it's a drastically different effort output, and the strain is different but likely where there's smoke, there's fire.

I see it online a lot these days, people get so captured by the marathon that they forget about other distances, and their entire running identity is tied to their marathon time. It's like a black hole for some.

I wish there were more 10 mile races, such a fun distance to push yourself, while taking in some serious strength gains from that distance.

Coffee Bacon wrote:

Good god..

Had a heart attack en route to finishing for a BQ?! Blessings you survived to tell.

This probably merits a dedicated thread at some point to tell my story. I had a very comfortable, evenly-paced, well-prepared, negative-split race. I was just a couple of seconds ahead of BQ pace with a half mile to go so upped the effort to be safe. I crossed the line with 3 seconds to spare on the clock (a dozen more on the chip). Sprinting finish apparently is not a good thing to do (see item #10):

I had no idea I had an MI until 5 days later. Heart attacks are not dramatic like you see on TV. I thought it just must be very very bad (unprecedented for me) GU indigestion. Chest felt like I had ran the race on it, but heart was performing normally post race in terms of resting rates, recovery, etc.

Turns out a cholesterol plaque ruptured in final moments and the resulting clotting reaction left me with a 100% clogged right coronary artery. I blame the plaque and artery damage on previous unhealthy weight and ongoing residual belly fat driven inflammation . You can't run away from your history.

I survived it with no functional damage -- ran a near 5K PR a month after having artery cleared and stented-- due to my heart having developed (or activated) very robust collateral arteries that supplied nearly all of the affected area. I likely developed those through years of marathon training. Without them I could have been much much worse off and who's to say the same event wasn't going to happen at my desk as an obese non-marathoner. Shorter distance races would be ideal as you say, but in my experience there is nothing like a marathon goal/training program to get weight going in right direction.

The challenge with an event like mine is there is probably no worst time in life to differentiate between an MI and "You just ran the marathon of your life, of course you are in incredible pain..". The lesson is, when in doubt, go to medical tent or hospital. There are EKG and blood tests that can quickly detect if an event is in progress. You know what things feels like at the end of a long run. The finish of a marathon shouldn't be that different. Severe dehydration might give similar general pain, but that's something that needs treatment as well. You can't imagine the regret I felt when I first realized I'd not acted on symptoms. Time is muscle and I've lost some, although luckily not too much. If doc recommends daily aspirin, take it, particularly before race as the race activates clotting response.