The Half Life of Caffeine; Plus Death by Caffeine Calculator

With rising popularity of energy drinks (supermarket shelves contain dozens of different brands), exactly how much caffeine can you safely consume? Caffeine-centric blog Energy Fiend has the answer.

Caffeine takes a certain amount of time to work through your system. One study some years ago showed that the half-life of caffeine in healthy adults is 5.7 hours (see source). This means if you consume 200mg of caffeine at mid-day, you would still have 100mg in you at around 5.45pm.

The same study showed that people with compromised liver function had a significantly longer half-life (a 49-year-old woman having alcoholic hepatic disease had a serum half-life of 168 hours).

Use the death by caffeine calculator to see how many cans of Red Bull or Coke you can drink before keeling over. If you're a real caffeine addict, you can use these two pieces of information to figure out a caffeine dosing schedule to keep your body at peak caffeine levels without overdosing (Note: Not Recommended).

Labels: Technology