The scent of freshly brewed coffee is a holy grail for most people in the morning. But, the problem comes when you start getting a little too attached to your cup of latte.
There is a limit on how much caffeine you should consume in a day, and if you exceed that limit, it might have adverse health effects.
300mg of caffeine is allowed for an adult in a day. Anything over 300mg to 350mg should be avoided. 300mg of caffeine hardly makes 3 cups of coffee in a day of 6 ounces.
Want to know more about it? Keep reading.
Can I Drink 300mg of Caffeine?
Yes, it is allowed for an adult to consume 300mg of caffeine in a day. If you are a coffee enthusiast, 300mg should be your limit for caffeine. Drinking 100mg to 200mg and not exceeding it.
At times, we drink beverages that we don’t even know are caffeinated, and it is fine. Exceeding the limit once in a while might not be that big of a deal.
But, if you are constantly drinking caffeinated drinks in excess, it will heavily affect your health.
Make sure to keep track of how much caffeine you are consuming in a day just to always be on the safe side. 300mg is your limit, but that does not mean you have to reach this limit.
It is better if you keep your caffeine consumption as low as possible.
The kind of caffeinated drink you are consuming also matters a lot. If it is a heavily sweetened soft drink, then you should not drink it at all because it could affect your health, even if it is low in caffeine.
How Much Caffeine is Too Much?
The quantity of caffeine that exceeds the limit of 300mg a day is too much. FDA suggests that about 400mg of caffeine is too much, which is around 4 cups of coffee a day. Though it will not be extremely dangerous for you, it could still affect your health.
So, staying under the safe limit of 300mg a day is advised. However, some people drink like 10 cups of coffee a day and still function to their fullest.
That just means they can metabolize coffee faster, and not that drinking 10 cups is fine.
How much caffeine is too much also depends upon who is drinking it. For example, if someone is pregnant, they should lay off the caffeine; even the minimum quantity of caffeine could be too much for them.
Also, when it comes to children, even the least concentration of caffeine in a drink is too much. However, regular adults could have around 250-300mg of caffeine daily, which would not mess their health up at all.
There are people with very low caffeine tolerance, so even 300mg could be too much for them. So, it all comes down to the person who is consuming caffeine and his health condition.
Signs of Drinking Too Much Caffeine
If you take a few daily trips to Starbucks, you already know what we are talking about. When you are consuming a lot of caffeine, your body starts dropping hints and trying to tell you that there is something seriously wrong.
So, you need to listen to your body and decrease the amount of caffeine you consume if you get any of the below-given signs.
● Insomnia
Caffeine is famous for ruining your good night’s sleep and is most likely to give you insomnia too. If you consume too much caffeine, it will mess up your sleeping cycle, and you will not be able to sleep at all.
Drinking a few extra cups of coffee during exams would be a good idea. But, drinking a lot of coffee on weekdays means that you would not be able to sleep the following night and wake up really tired the next day.
● Increased Heartbeat
If you drink a lot of coffee daily, you are most likely to have an increased heartbeat. Especially for people with heart problems, coffee is a complete no-go area. It raises your heartbeat very fast, which is not good for your health.
If your heart is beating fast after a few cups of coffee, it is your sign to stop because you’ve had a little too much coffee. Faster heart beating is more of an extreme sign, and you might only notice it when your coffee consumption is a lot more than usual.
● Lack of Urine Control
Coffee messes up your urinary system too. It will be particularly problematic when you are out and about with your friends. Once you become a coffee addict and drink more coffee than you are supposed to, you start losing your urine control.
Also, you will constantly have to urinate and even twice an hour at times. Losing control over your urination and having to take like 10 bathroom trips in one party is a nightmare for everyone.
And once you go through it, it is a clear-cut sign that your urine consumption has gotten out of hand, and you need to check on it right away.
● Headache
Headache is yet another sign that you are consuming a lot of caffeine. You will have constant pain in your front or entire head every time you drink more than 2 cups of coffee. It just means your coffee consumption needs to stop.
Headaches could be a big problem, and they could also affect your productivity quite a lot. So, it is important to only drink coffee within a limit; exceeding that limit would probably be the worst idea.
Food Products That Have Too Much Caffeine in Them
When trying to keep tabs on your caffeine consumption, it is important to know what food products have excessive caffeine in them. Make sure always to check the ingredient list just to be on the safe side and not accidentally exceed your caffeine limit of the day.
Some pretty common things contain a lot more caffeine than you can imagine. They could also be the reason why your caffeine consumption is going off the charts.
So, let’s get into it and find out all the food products with excessive caffeine.
- Chocolate
- Energy Drinks
- Chewing Gum
- Green Tea
- Coffee
- Espresso
- Latte
- Kola Nuts
- Soda
How to Check If There is Too Much Caffeine in a Product?
You can check the concentration of caffeine in any product by reading its ingredient list. For the most part, all the important ingredients are written in that list, and you will most likely find caffeine on the list too.
It is important always to check the ingredient list, but if you cannot find a proper ingredient list on the product packaging, the best thing to do is go online and check the ingredients out from different databases available online.
If you want to know the caffeine concentration of a random product like milk, you obviously cannot see it on the box, so you would just go to any caffeine-calculating website and enter the product name and ounces.
The site will let you know what could be the caffeine concentration in your respective product.
Do All Coffees Have the Same Caffeine Level?
No, all coffees don’t have the same caffeine concentration even if you add the same quantity. It is because the region where coffee grows and its environment also has an impact on the quality of caffeine.
And, if the caffeine is of good quality, it will obviously work better. You can also make your coffee stronger according to your preference, which means all coffees do not typically have the same caffeine level.
Also, there is a newly introduced coffee type which is called decaffeinated. This type is mostly ordered by people who are laying off of traditional coffee. It just means that your coffee does not have an extravagant amount of caffeine.
But that does not guarantee at all that your coffee is free from caffeine because even decaffeinated ones have some caffeine in them. The amount of caffeine in this type of coffee could be negligible, though.
However, if you are extremely sensitive to caffeine, staying away from decaffeinated coffee is better.
Conclusion
All the caffeine junkies have the same kind of question about how much caffeine is too much. We have given you an answer, and we hope you will not exceed the limit of 300mg of caffeine per day because that might not be a good idea for your health.
Make sure to keep an eye on your caffeine intake and check all the ingredients on the products you use to always be aware of the stuff you are consuming.
It is not about being overly paranoid but about consuming everything mindfully and taking care of your body.
Lay off coffee for today, at least!