Thanks for the responses everyone. Re-evaluating sugar seems to be helping quite a bit - and the amount that feels good seems to be in line with 5-10 grams per cup. I'm able to tolerate 2 cups again, up from 1. We'll see how high it ends up going lol.

""Symptoms to expect when you do coffee right are calmness, focus, motivation, warmth, and stable energy. Coffee done wrong leads to anxiety, shakiness, sweating, feeling wired, inability to focus, and sometimes cold extremities.""

This right here seems very much correct! No shakiness or "tired-but-wired" feeling, and sleep these past few days has been a bit better, but I know new habits take a while to test.

I suppose I've been progressing over the years - black coffee in my early 20s, adding some milk in my late 20s, and now I'm adding sugar I guess. Better metabolic and stress tolerance habits as I age. It's like there's some reserve of stress tolerance we build up as carefree teenagers that we slowly but surely deplete through dumb habits (black coffee, fasting, etc) and life stress as we get older. Well, never too late to get on the right track, right?

@LetTheRedeemed Damn yeah that makes a lot of sense and may be what's going on. I guess it creeps up on you and as a dude it's very tempting/easy to keep telling yourself you're fine and pushing through whatever.

I always thought having a bit of milk with my coffee was enough, but maybe not? I'll keep at the sugar for sure. I just did it this morning after posting the thread, certainly I feel more level and better energy thus far, sleep, we'll see...

'Coffee before bed' that's crazy though XD Maybe that's the goal one day, I envy those people who can have an espresso at 7pm with dinner and be fine.

Anyways regarding the sugar with coffee, I'll try... 10 grams to start (per basic cup of coffee)? That's pretty sweet-tasting, but only 40 calories so whatever (I never understood people worrying about adding milk/sugar to coffee... worry about the crap food eating out!).

@wester130 I've never heard of 'schisandra/rhodiola', if those are supplements I'd like to leave it as a last line of defense, trying to cut down on stuff not from food.

So you figure it's an overall cortisol issue? I mean fair enough, getting older certainly has piled on the responsibilities and stress, it's higher than 5+ years ago but I (think I) manage it decently.

Is cortisol/stress known to mess with liver function, metabolism of things like caffeine?

Can definitely try some coconut oil. I was also thinking butter, I remember feeling consistently good with more of that in my diet.

I notice as I enter my mid-30s, that I have a harder time metabolizing caffeine. It seems to stay in my system longer than it used to and disrupts my sleep. For reference, throughout my 20s I'd regularly have ~400mg of caffeine from various sources, have great energy and sleep fine mostly. Then as I entered early 30s, sleep started getting more disrupted, nighttime urination started, etc.

Quick background - generally healthy adult male, normal BMI, moderately active with some weightlifting, eating a balanced/mixed diet, reasonable protein about 2g/kg average, a few supps (D3, multi, zinc, magnesium, occasional or weekly: K2/aspirin, taurine, E, B complex).

I've been decreasing caffeine a fair bit to compensate lately, but don't necessarily think this is the right long-term solution. I'm on board with Ray's thoughts about the positives of caffeine: https://raypeat.com/articles/articles/caffeine.shtml
Regardless of whatever negatives I've had lately, I always feel great having my caffeine, and my body seems to agree with it, with my mind becoming sharper, mood much better, and a small amount of water retention or puffiness decreasing (nice anti-estrogen, diuretic, etc).

So I wonder what some manageable solutions could be here. I usually have lattes or some amount of milk with coffee, don't do the black anymore. I'll start trying with some sugar as well, why not. The supplement list above with my core 4 is now a reduced version, I used to take more stuff but I've been trying to cut it down while improving diet quality and variety.

Any thoughts, similar experiences, etc? Cheers

(edit - replying to @Norwegian Mugabe) But he takes 100+ supplements daily

Yeah I really don't get this guy. His diet is so good apparently but is insufficient to:

1. get him the nutrients he needs, so he takes 100+ supplements,

2. keep healthy hormone levels, so he takes testosterone and other hormones

Really weird approach. I'd think the diet is foundational, and supplements should be the minimum to fill in gaps.

I think his approach is literally the "chatGPT" of health. He'll follow midwit science ("oh this is good, so is this, and this, let's supplement all these things!") and put it all together and end up with this weird frankenstein approach where his positive results and appearance is probably explained 95% by testosterone, weight loss/cleaner diet (he was quite pudgy before), and good sleep.

Damn that's pretty sad... I remember reading briefly about all his high maintenance pre-cautions he takes in order to travel, planning in the extra sleep, meticulously packing all these vitamins and supplements and other remedies. And the man supposedly exercises every day too and has great strength for his age and size...

But then he just breaks his ankle dancing, doing normie people stuff?

Pretty damning to his whole philosophy imo.

https://x.com/bryan_johnson/status/1860016163960557983?t=23RTNKqCiXfOpIRQd6QrUA&s=19

Interesting follow up, posted an exhaustive list of biomarkers and physical tests.

A lot of these seem really good tbh.

@Gardner how is lowering his metabolic rate going to help with longevity? What happens when he gets sick or injured?

https://x.com/bryan_johnson/status/1859962709988798824?t=KGCHEIo5VYbLEbwjQFd2xQ&s=19

Here's a study he cites:

https://x.com/bryan_johnson/status/1859980688520564954?t=83yeQBngnlPuIiIuqTOz9Q&s=19

I think this is a poor approach. We need to dig out those sources about caloric restriction not necessarily being the longevity panacea that people think. IIRC it was the restriction of other nutrients that actually helped, not lower calories.

Johnson's influence and following is potentially going to lead to really poor outcomes in others. A major issue is that Johnson is not natural, i.e. he takes exogeneous hormones that others won't want to do (or even realize). He needs them because his odd diet and extreme supplementation regime cannot support healthy testosterone levels.

The one good thing I think he does is preach the importance of consistent good sleep. Otherwise I'm not so sure on this guy.

This is such fantastic work! I wish there was like a crowd funding system for this type of independent scientific research, I'd chip in money lol. And as a reward maybe give ppl the raw data and/or write up.

An interesting mix of B vitamins, why those 3 in particular? Anyone have the cliff notes?

Maybe those are good longevity health supps