Getting started
Coffee during colonoscopy prep: black is usually on the clear-liquid list, and a headache is the bigger risk
The short answer
Getting Started
Your first steps away from coffee — without the headache.
Getting started
Can you drink coffee before a fasting blood test? Even black coffee can nudge your glucose
The short answer
Getting started
Caffeine before a sleep study: the cutoff is earlier than you'd guess, and there's an honest reason not to cheat
If you’ve been booked for an overnight sleep study, the prep sheet probably has a line that makes a daily coffee drinker wince: no caffeine after a certain t...
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Caffeine before a cardiac stress test: why the instructions say no coffee, and no decaf either
If a doctor has booked you for a cardiac stress test, the instruction sheet may contain a line that stops regular coffee drinkers cold: no caffeine for the d...
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Quitting caffeine before finals? The study says stress wrecked students' sleep, not the extra coffee — so time the taper around it
Finals are the one stretch of the year when every reason to quit caffeine and every reason not to show up together. You’re jittery, sleeping badly, and drink...
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Quitting caffeine as an airline pilot: the FAA won't let most crews nap on duty, so the taper has to happen on the ground
Most advice about quitting caffeine assumes a life where you control your own bedtime. Airline pilots don’t have that life. You have a federal rule that hand...
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Quitting caffeine while trying to conceive: what the guidelines actually say, and how to taper without a headache
Almost every trying-to-conceive checklist tells you to “cut back on caffeine.” Almost none of them tell you to how much, by when, or whether it applies to a ...
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Quitting caffeine on a long-haul route: the coffee that cuts crash risk can also cost you the 10-hour reset
If you drive for a living, caffeine probably isn’t a preference. It’s equipment. And most of the advice aimed at people quitting caffeine assumes a life that...
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Fasting for Ramadan and quitting caffeine at the same time? Here's the taper that skips the headache
If you drink coffee or tea every day and you’re fasting for Ramadan this year, there’s a decent chance the first day or two isn’t going to be about hunger. I...
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My surgery is in three weeks. Do I quit caffeine now, or keep drinking it until the morning of?
I have a fairly routine outpatient procedure booked for three weeks from now — nothing dramatic, the kind of thing that comes with a pre-op packet and a list...
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Is karkade Egypt's automatic caffeine-free pour? I checked room by room
Hassan Ibrahim left a comment from Cairo on last week’s Turkey, Balkans and North Africa piece that I flagged immediately as its own article rather than a re...
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Ordering caffeine-free in Turkey, the Balkans and North Africa: a fourth pattern, or one I hadn't earned
Five days after the piece correcting my café assumptions went up, Deniz Aydin left a comment from Izmir that I’ve been thinking about since. His point was si...
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Ordering caffeine-free abroad: the countries where it's already on the menu
Five weeks ago I wrote a sentence I was confident about: “a café almost certainly cannot give you a coffee-shaped drink without coffee in it.” A reader in Tu...
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How to walk back into a coffee shop: the four-minute version, for people who've been waiting outside
Five days ago I published a piece arguing that avoiding coffee is the right move early and the wrong move forever, and that the failure mode nobody counts is...
Getting started
Avoid it or get used to it? The first two weeks off caffeine are a different project from the rest
Last week I published a piece about going caffeine-free next to someone who still drinks coffee, and the advice at the centre of it was this: don’t remove th...
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Quitting caffeine when your partner still drinks it: two mugs, one counter
I’ve written about most of the places caffeine ambushes you. The office pot and the 3pm coffee run. The airport at 6am. The kitchen ten feet from your desk w...
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Quitting caffeine with young kids: the exhausted-parent version of going caffeine-free
Every guide to quitting caffeine — including some I’ve written — quietly assumes one thing: that you’re the one in charge of your sleep. Go to bed a little e...
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The work-from-home coffee trap: staying caffeine-free when the kitchen is ten feet away
A reader named Priyanka left a comment on my piece about staying caffeine-free at the office that I couldn’t stop thinking about. She said the office version...
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Staying caffeine-free at the office: the coffee run, the meeting pot, and the 3pm slump
For a long time I thought quitting caffeine was a morning problem. You get past the first cup, you’re home free. Then I went back to a desk job, and I found ...
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Staying caffeine-free while traveling: airports, hotels, and the 6am flight
I can tell you the exact place my caffeine-free streak has come closest to ending, more than once. It isn’t a bad day at work or a rough night’s sleep. It’s ...
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Drinking coffee again after quitting caffeine: what one cup actually feels like at six months
I want to be honest about how this happened, because the internet version of quitting caffeine is a clean line — you stop, it’s hard for a week, and then you...
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Why caffeine wrecks your afternoon: the half-life math nobody does
I used to think my afternoon was just like that. A good morning, a productive run until about 1pm, and then a wall — that heavy, can’t-focus, why-is-everythi...
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Quitting caffeine when everyone around you drinks coffee: the social part nobody warns you about
The first time I quit caffeine, I braced for the headache. Everybody warns you about the headache. Three days of feeling like someone parked a car on my fore...
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Day-sleep that actually works: the blackout, the cold room, and the setup for sleeping when the sun's up
I am not a shift worker, but I’ve spent a strange amount of my life trying to sleep when the sun was up. Red-eye recovery. The summer I worked a 4am bakery p...
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A morning routine for shift workers, without caffeine — when your morning isn't morning
A couple of weeks ago a reader named Marco left a comment on my piece about waking up without coffee. He’s a rotating shift worker — nights and days, on what...
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What happens at day 30 off caffeine: an honest accounting of the part nobody logs
A few weeks ago I wrote a day-by-day log of my first two weeks off caffeine. I ended it on day 16, said the trade was worth it, and promised — mostly to myse...
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How to wake up without coffee: the cortisol awakening response, explained
The first morning I quit coffee, I sat at my kitchen counter at 6:40 a.m. waiting for the version of myself that opens the laptop and starts doing things, an...
Getting started
Two weeks without caffeine: an honest day-by-day log
This is the second time I’ve done fourteen days off caffeine. The first time was eighteen months ago and lasted nine months. This one started two Mondays bac...
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The best morning drink instead of coffee (from someone who's tried most of them)
I drank coffee every morning for nineteen years. Then for about eighteen months I didn’t. Then I started again. Then I cut back. Along the way I tried, in ro...
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What to drink during caffeine withdrawal
On day 2 of my first real attempt at quitting coffee, I poured myself a glass of water with lemon and stared at it like it had personally insulted me. The pr...
Getting started
How to quit caffeine without the headache
I have quit caffeine four times. The first time was cold turkey, a Monday morning, and by Tuesday evening I had a headache so bad I thought I was getting the...