How Much Caffeine Would Kill You?
- Thread starter John Funk
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You can't kill yourself with caffeinated "Drinks" because the amount you would have to consume would burst your stomach open before the caffeine got to you.
Yes, way too much caffeine can kill you! The problem today seems to be that no one knows just how much caffeine they consume every day. That's because caffeine is in EVERYTHING. Beverage, food and pharmaceutical products have higher and higher amounts of caffeine -- even chewing gum and potato chips. There's one energy drink that has almost 1200 mg caffeine.(Compare that to the average cup of coffee which has 30 to 100 mg caffeine.)
Now we have a problem with "caffeine intoxication." Poison control centers and hospital emergency rooms are seeing more and more people ill with caffeine intoxication. And more than half of these folks are under 18 years old.
People need to be aware! The Ethic Soup blog has a good series of concise, informative articles on caffeine at:
http://www.ethicsoup.com/caffeine-the-worlds-most-popular-drug.html
Now we have a problem with "caffeine intoxication." Poison control centers and hospital emergency rooms are seeing more and more people ill with caffeine intoxication. And more than half of these folks are under 18 years old.
People need to be aware! The Ethic Soup blog has a good series of concise, informative articles on caffeine at:
http://www.ethicsoup.com/caffeine-the-worlds-most-popular-drug.html
Reminds me of that one episode of Rocko's Modern Life when they found out that one food would kill you if you ate it, but you had to eat an absurdly huge amount of it for it to be dangerous (which of course Hef did).
Anyway we also need to keep in mind that some people are more sensitive to caffeine than others, so I'd be willing to bet that it would take less caffeine to kill them. I can never have more than a can or so of Coke before I start getting shaky, but I'm sure there are people even more sensitive than me.
Anyway we also need to keep in mind that some people are more sensitive to caffeine than others, so I'd be willing to bet that it would take less caffeine to kill them. I can never have more than a can or so of Coke before I start getting shaky, but I'm sure there are people even more sensitive than me.
And another thing...
I just read all of the above comments and a quite a few claim that your stomach would burst before you could die and that a person could not drink enough affeinated drink to kill them.
WRONG KNUCKLEHEADS!
Talk to an emergency room doctor. She'll tell you that one of the things that happens to folks with caffeine intoxication is the get nauseous and start vomiting. So what, you might say, hospital emergency rooms have medication that will stop the vomiting. WRONG AGAIN! The emergency rooms do have medications to stop the symptoms of people who overdose on drugs, but they don't have any meds when it's caffeine-induced. And what does that suggest? Well, if you keep vomiting, you become seriously dehydrated and that's life-threatening at the extreme.
Most people just don't realize that caffeine is that dangerous. Be especially careful with energy drinks.
I just read all of the above comments and a quite a few claim that your stomach would burst before you could die and that a person could not drink enough affeinated drink to kill them.
WRONG KNUCKLEHEADS!
Talk to an emergency room doctor. She'll tell you that one of the things that happens to folks with caffeine intoxication is the get nauseous and start vomiting. So what, you might say, hospital emergency rooms have medication that will stop the vomiting. WRONG AGAIN! The emergency rooms do have medications to stop the symptoms of people who overdose on drugs, but they don't have any meds when it's caffeine-induced. And what does that suggest? Well, if you keep vomiting, you become seriously dehydrated and that's life-threatening at the extreme.
Most people just don't realize that caffeine is that dangerous. Be especially careful with energy drinks.
I wanted to check the validity of your sources so I had a look at the Registry of Toxic Effects of Chemical Substances (RTECS) to see exactly what caffeine could do to you as well as what was the minimum reported lethal dose.CantFaketheFunk said:
Now, obviously I'm not sure of your weight so I based my results around my weight (75kg, which equals 141.06 cans of Red Bull).
Now, considering there is 80mg of caffeine in each can that means I would have ingested 11,284.8mg of caffeine allowing for total absorption of the substance, which means I would have ingested 150.464mg/kg of body weight.
According to RTECS, the lowest published lethal dose is 192mg/kg of caffeine for their particular test group. Remember though that this is the LDLo, the lowest lethal dose and most values of toxic substances are published in LD50 (Lethal dose sufficient to kill 50% of the test group) so the values given by this website are actually substantially lower than those found by scientific literature, probably for legal reasons to stop people going out and actively trying to down said number of cans.
BUT, that's just the lethal dose. In regards to toxic RTECS reports that at doses of 51mg/kg (47.81 cans for my weight) that dramatic changes in heart rate, renal failure, acute tubular necrosis (kidney damage) and severe musculoskeletal tremors. Even worse, 91mg/kg intermittedly over the course of a day produced hallucinations, toxic psychosis, diarrhea and altered perception. At 140mg/kg toxic effects include muscle spasticity, a dramatic increase in heart rate without a fall in BP which resulted in hemmorhage.
The lesson here today is don't abuse caffeine. It's fantastic to use to stay awake but remember it is a drug and can do some serious harm if abused. Your data comes in lower than scientific literature for amount of caffeine needed to kill, and higher than values reported to have severe toxic effects.
Just making sure that people know.
MaxTheReaper said:
I'm guessing the period of time is how long it would stay in your system. It takes our bodies around 12 hours to process food and less to process drink. Give or take a few hours. So that means for instance you would have to drink 130 cups of coffee in roughly 12 hours or less to kill yourself. Also the amount you weigh and your age affect how much you need to do you in. the older and fatter you are, the more you can take. until you reach senior level, then it goes backwards.
All in all it's such a ridicules amount it's nothing we need to worry about in our day to day lives.
considering I make and drink no less than 5 pots a day Im thinking I can take quite a bit... but then again, to be fair not every pot gets finished, some still have a cups worth left but it's gone cold so I make a new batch..
okay I need 93 cups in a day to kill me...Im not that bad
okay I need 93 cups in a day to kill me...Im not that bad
Completely true. The only thing which defines a 'poison' is the amount it takes to kill you. Water, oxygen, salt, everything will kill you depending on how much you consume.Incredible Bullshitting Man said:
I read a similar thing, the coffee sends your heart beating into overdrive until it finally gives up.Wouldukindly said:
Yeah, the only way to actually kill yourself with caffeine is to OD on caffeine pills.
Most soft drinks/energy drinks would put you into a diabetic coma long before you experienced much more than jitters from the caffeine, and coffee would eat your stomach lining.
Most soft drinks/energy drinks would put you into a diabetic coma long before you experienced much more than jitters from the caffeine, and coffee would eat your stomach lining.