Welsh EJ, Bara A, Barley E, Cates CJ. Caffeine for asthma. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2010;2010(1):CD001112.

One review study showed that 300 mg of caffeine per day in healthy pregnant women is safe, with limited data suggesting that 1.1 mg of caffeine per pound (2.5 mg per kg) of body weight in children and adolescents may be safe ( 2). Drinking coffee unsweetened, and swapping whole milk for skimmed, one per cent or semi-skimmed, could help your heart health more than focusing on caffeine. You may not realize that too much caffeine is interfering with your sleep if you underestimate the amount of caffeine you’re taking in.

Giving up caffeine comfortably

I thought of myself as a pretty good sleeper before I met Walker. At lunch he probed me about my sleep habits. I told him I usually get a solid seven hours, fall asleep easily, dream most nights. In addition, there have been several reports of rhabdomyolysis related to excessive caffeine intake, although this is relatively rare ( 26, 27, 28, 29). Freak shakes can come in at over 1,000 calories – more than half of what you need for an entire day There may be health benefits to drinking tea and coffee, but if you take your tea or coffee with sugar, honey or syrups it can add up. Adding a 5g teaspoon of sugar to 5 cups of tea or coffee over the day adds 100 calories or 700kcals over the week – the same amount of energy as 20 rich tea biscuits or three Mars bars. It’s less than in a sugar-sweetened soft drink, but if you cut out the sugar in your tea and coffee, it could help you to lose around 10lb over a year. Is drinking tea and coffee bad for my heart? And how much caffeine is too much? BHF dietitian Victoria Taylor says:

Although coffee and tea are the most concentrated sources of caffeine, it is also found in soda, cocoa, energy drinks and several types of medication. Quinine has been found to interact with some medications has been linked with irregular heart rhythms

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) generally recognizes caffeine as safe. Consuming up to 400 mg of caffeine per day has not been associated with adverse health effects in healthy adults ( 1, 2, 3). In one study, 16 people who typically consumed high, moderate or no caffeine took part in a word test after going without caffeine overnight. Only high caffeine users showed a bias for caffeine-related words and had strong caffeine cravings ( 31). Although some people think that the caffeine in tea and coffee might damage their health, this isn’t the case for most people. In fact, drinking moderate amounts (4-5 cups a day) of tea or coffee has been linked to benefits for reducing risk of CVDand type 2 diabetes.