Caffeine and Hallucination Proneness

[pelagius]

High Caffeine Intake Linked To Hallucination Proneness

No idea if its a good study or if its published in a good journal. Just thought it was interesting. I assume from the article that an experimental design with a treatment and control group was not used. It looked like they just tracked 200 students who were selected or volunteered for the study.

Expect an Ensign article about this study soon.

[ERCougar]

High Caffeine Intake Linked To Hallucination Proneness

No idea if its a good study or if its published in a good journal. Just thought it was interesting. I assume from the article that an experimental design with a treatment and control group was not used. It looked like they just tracked 200 students who were selected or volunteered for the study.

Expect an Ensign article about this study soon.

LOL...

I've never heard of the journal and I'm sure you realize that this is merely an association study, and a weak one at that.

[pelagius]

LOL...

I've never heard of the journal and I'm sure you realize that this is merely an association study, and a weak one at that.

Ya, an obvious channel is that people are more likely to Hallucinate when under heavy stress and people are more likely to use more caffeine when under stress. Its possible they try to control for stress and seperate out the effects but I can't tell from the news report.

[Jeff Lebowski]

We had stake priesthood meeting last Sunday night and one of the member of stake presidency gave a hard-line talk on caffeine consumption.

"Doctors have long suspected a link between caffeine and heart problems....... Although the conclusive evidence has not been found yet."

"The church does not have an official position on cola drinks, but ...."

I think they are worried about energy drink consumption by the youth (a legit worry, IMO) but it came off as overly hysterical. And mullah-ish.

[pelagius]

We had stake priesthood meeting last Sunday night and one of the member of stake presidency gave a hard-line talk on caffeine consumption.

"Doctors have long suspected a link between caffeine and heart problems....... Although the conclusive evidence has not been found yet."

"The church does not have an official position on cola drinks, but ...."

I think they are worried about energy drink consumption by the youth (a legit worry, IMO) but it came off as overly hysterical. And mullah-ish.

Well forward the study to him ... it will help give his talk some firepower next time.

[beelzebabette]

Ya, an obvious channel is that people are more likely to Hallucinate when under heavy stress and people are more likely to use more caffeine when under stress. Its possible they try to control for stress and seperate out the effects but I can't tell from the news report.

I'm obviously no doctor, but I understood hallucinations could stem from fatigue, and (if so) it would seem caffeine consumption & hallucination could be a correlation & not a causation.

[pelagius]

I'm obviously no doctor, but I understood hallucinations could stem from fatigue, and (if so) it would seem caffeine consumption & hallucination could be a correlation & not a causation.

Yes that's another possible correlated non causal channel in addition to the stress channel I suggested. Its is possible to control for things like stress and fatigue in the statistical design; it wouldn't take particularly sophisticated statistics to try to do such a thing (although stress, fatigue, and caffeine consumption may be too highly correlated to do this sucessfully (in addition to measurement error problems)). However, without the actual study I can't assess if they tried to do anything like that. Still, even with good controls it would still just be associative as ER suggested. Since it doesn't use a true experimental design the set of inferences are limited. Still it is possible that empirical work is good and controls reasonably well for obvious objections.

[CardiacCoug]

"Doctors have long suspected a link between caffeine and heart problems....... Although the conclusive evidence has not been found yet."

Atrial fibrillation and supraventricular tachycardia can definitely be triggered by caffeine in some people, so he's not totally off base. I would be shocked if caffeine had any effect on causing coronary artery disease or heart attacks -- that just isn't biologically plausible.

I drink plenty of diet caffeinated soda, but the energy drinks with very high caffeine content seem like a bad idea for teenagers. Ingesting something that will disturb your sleep patterns and provide a lot of empty calories is not very smart, especially for an age group that is still growing and setting their baseline weight for the rest of adulthood.

[ERCougar]

I would be shocked if caffeine had any effect on causing coronary artery disease or heart attacks -- that just isn't biologically plausible.

I've read somewhere that caffeine triggers insulin release. If that's true, couldn't that contribute to CAD?

[wuapinmon]

We had stake priesthood meeting last Sunday night and one of the member of stake presidency gave a hard-line talk on caffeine consumption.

"Doctors have long suspected a link between caffeine and heart problems....... Although the conclusive evidence has not been found yet."

"The church does not have an official position on cola drinks, but ...."

I think they are worried about energy drink consumption by the youth (a legit worry, IMO) but it came off as overly hysterical. And mullah-ish.

CONFORM BROTHER!