Sunday’s grand mal seizure made me more careful about caffeine. I remember visiting Dr Shin approximately a year ago for a consultation about nighttime mucus. Among other things, his main recommendation was to cut back on caffeine to avoid dehydration.
At the time, I pushed aside that rec. First off, he claimed kombucha was a high source of caffeine when in actuality each bottle of GTS has only 8–16mg. Secondly, a Google search showed that many new scientific studies no longer support caffeine dehydration claims.
However, I might be one of the few people that really get dehydrated from caffeine; if so, it would explain a lot. Dehydration causes mucus generation, making it more likely for seizures to occur. In fact, many of my nighttime seizure attacks happened on days after I drank excess caffeine. For example, on 7/14 I had 80mg from Rockstar + 91mg from Mtn Dew; on 7/23 I had 116mg Celsius + 15mg Pink Lady Apple + 20mg x2 Kopiko.
Theoretically speaking, if caffeine dehydration is really an issue, then I might not need a morning dose to wake up. Less caffeine => less mucus => less morning haziness. Even so, I won’t pull the plugs right away. Going forward, I’ll lower my daily intake to 50mg and try to limit myself to 100mg max. On days I wake up fully energized, I’ll skip my energy drink altogether.
PS: after writing this post, realized that caffeine directly triggers mucus production. With that in mind, I might not be suffering from caffeine dehydration, but it is still bad for me.
