Caffeine: How Much Is Too Much?
episodePreviously titled “Caffeine: How Much is Too Much?” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 5, 2026
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What is our love/hate relationship with caffeine?
Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus. And this is the show that pits facts against flat whites. On today's show, caffeine. Should you quit it?
How does caffeine affect our gut health?
Caffeine is one of the most used drugs in the world. 85% of people in the US drink at least one caffeinated beverage each day. And that includes kids.
What impact does caffeine have on our brain?
But yet, despite the fact that we are shoving this drink down our pie holes, there have always been these fears that caffeine is bad for our health.
Your cup of coffee could soon come with a spoonful of cancer warning. My heart was racing. I was super anxious. Something was happening.
How does caffeine influence our sleep patterns?
I was having a panic attack. Could it all be a sign, though, of a serious problem? A problem like caffeine addiction.
And our worries around caffeine have reached new heights when it comes to energy drinks. Just last year, a 17-year-old from Texas died after drinking Alani New.
A Texas family is filing a wrongful death lawsuit over an energy drink that they claimed killed a teenage girl.
According to family lawyers, a coroner's report shows that she died from an enlarged heart caused by stress and a large amount of caffeine from Ohlone energy drinks.
The distributor being sued denies the claims, and the company that makes the drink says it's labeled not recommended for children.
Are we becoming caffeine addicts?
But this is just the latest in a string of scary stories from the past several years of people, often younger people, dying soon after drinking energy drinks.
Davis collapsed in the classroom of his high school in South Carolina. It wasn't a car crash that took his life. Instead, it was an energy drink. She drank two 24-ounce energy drinks in less than 24 hours.
And it took her life. So today on the show, what is this drug doing to our brains and our bodies? Is it ruining our sleep, turning us into caffeine addicts, and potentially even killing us?
What dangers do energy drinks pose to our health?
When it comes to caffeine, there's a lot of... My heart was racing. But then, there's science. Science vs. Caffeine is coming up just after the break.
I'm Dan Heath. On What It's Like to Be, I interview people about their jobs. Here's a married couple that drives a long-haul truck together.
We backed up and they loaded fresh dead rats.
I mean, how many rats would you guess were back there?
There were 32,000 pounds of them.
32,000 pounds of frozen dead rats. Yeah, that's incorrect. Find out what it's like to be a long-haul trucker, a couples therapist, or an FBI agent, all on the podcast What It's Like To Be.
Welcome back. Today on the show, we're taking on caffeine and energy drinks to find out once and for all how bad is this stuff? What is it doing in our bodies and our brains? And we first drank up the science on caffeine a few years ago when we first put down this episode. And back then, there was all of this hubbub about the energy drink prime. And that's what got senior producer Rose Rimler interested in this topic in the first place.
Yeah. A lot of the talk was about how it's got a crazy amount of caffeine. It's bad for us. And energy drinks are bad for us. And sort of just this feeling that like caffeine is bad for us. And I don't know about you, but I have caffeine every day when I have my coffee. So it made me wonder, like, is my caffeine habit something I should take a second look at? Or is caffeine like just all hunky-dory?
Yes, I love this question because caffeine has been a thing that I have actively said, you know what, I'm not into meth, but I'm going to be fine with my caffeine use. You know, I felt guilty about it and I do want to know whether I need to. So where do we begin?
Let's start with Astrid Nielig. She's a caffeine researcher. And she says she hears this idea about people feeling guilty about their caffeine intake all the time.
I meet somebody and they ask me on what I work. And I say, I work on coffees. And people are very shy all of a sudden and withdrawing a bit and telling me, oh, it's very bad. I should probably not drink.
Astrid is an emeritus research director at France's National Institute of Health and Medical Research, and she has studied caffeine for decades.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is our love/hate relationship with caffeine?
0:00–0:17
2
How does caffeine affect our gut health?
0:17–0:26
3
What impact does caffeine have on our brain?
0:26–0:45
4
How does caffeine influence our sleep patterns?
0:45–1:24
5
Are we becoming caffeine addicts?
1:24–2:05
6
What dangers do energy drinks pose to our health?
2:05–7:41
7
Is caffeine truly addictive or just habit-forming?
7:41–9:26
8
What are the potential health benefits of caffeine?
9:26–39:57