Coffee to Go? Caffeine and OCD

Mar 12

Written By Francesca Eldridge - Registered Clinical Nutritionist

After connecting a while ago over our respective work in the nutrition and mental health space, I recently asked Clinical Nutritionist Francesca Eldridge if she would share some thoughts on nutritional interventions for OCD that can give the best bang for your buck. Here are her thoughts on one powerful step.

My name is Francesca and I’ve lived with OCD since I was 10. In my teens and late 20s, I hit rock bottom with metaphysical contamination OCD – it was so distressing, it left me feeling suicidal. And at one point, I was housebound because of my obsessive thoughts.

After deciding enough was enough and committing my effort, time and money to creating a mental health toolbox, I’ve been living largely symptom-free of OCD since 2012. I now work as a registered clinical nutritionist, offering support to clients who are ready to begin their own OCD recovery.

This article discusses a nutrition and lifestyle change that my clients routinely report leads to reduced frequency, intensity and duration of their OCD spikes: taking a break from caffeinated drinks.

You’ll learn how caffeine impacts your nervous system. And I’ll share why I went cold turkey on caffeinated drinks for 6 years (yup!), after 19 years of suffering with OCD, and the benefits I experienced.

Caffeine is a depleting substance

Nourishing your nervous system is key to OCD recovery. However, nourishing your nervous system isn’t just about adding nourishing foods and supplements. It also requires removing foods and substances that deplete your nervous system.

Caffeine is one of the most commonly consumed substances that stimulates your central nervous system. It can be found in:

Energy drinks
Cola (Coke, any brand of cola)
Espresso coffee
Plunger coffee and drip coffee
Instant coffee
Black tea
White tea and green tea
Decaffeinated tea and coffee (though in small amounts)
It can also be found in cocoa/cacao/chocolate

Ever had a coffee and felt sweaty and on edge? Felt intensely stuck in the jaws of the OCD dragon? Found that obsessions seem to grip you harder? Noticed your thoughts racing? And struggled (more than usual) to sleep that night?

How caffeine affects your nervous system

Caffeine crosses your blood-brain barrier, the membrane between your brain and bloodstream. Once caffeine crosses this barrier, it affects the function of your neurotransmitters – the chemical means by which nerve cells communicate with each other. Sleep, thought, calm, mood and memory all reflect the activity of your neurotransmitters.

Neurotransmitters function as either excitatory or inhibitory. Put simply, excitatory neurotransmitters speed up nerve cell activity and decrease the pauses between nerve cell activity. Whereas inhibitory neurotransmitters slow down nerve cell activity and increase the pauses between nerve cell activity.

GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) is one of the most abundant inhibitory neurotransmitters in your body. It supports calm, relaxation and sleep. People with OCD, take note: caffeine decreases GABA levels (1) and lowered levels of GABA in the brain and blood serum have been linked with anxiety disorders, panic disorder, addiction, migraines and inflammation (2). Furthermore, stress also depletes GABA by increasing the metabolism of nutrients such as vitamin B6, which is a building block for GABA. So, if you’re already stressed out by situations in your life, plus you’re regularly drinking coffee, tea or energy drinks, you can end up low in GABA and more vulnerable to feeling anxious, panicked and experiencing OCD spikes.

Caffeine also blocks uptake of adenosine (3), a neurotransmitter that plays an important role in sleep and maintaining the structural integrity of your myelin sheathing (4) – the fatty, protective coating on your nerves that supports efficient transmission of nerve impulses. It’s worth noting that medical imaging studies have found people with OCD have abnormalities in their brain myelin when compared with the brains of people who don’t have OCD (5). This is not to say caffeine is what causes myelin abnormalities in people with OCD. But given caffeine is an adenosine inhibitor and adenosine plays a role in maintaining myelin integrity, drinking caffeine regularly isn’t likely to support the health of your myelin.

Finally, a third way caffeine affects your nervous system is via depletion of the anti-stress mineral magnesium and the B vitamins. When consumed in greater amounts, caffeine has a diuretic effect – it makes you pee more. This leads to loss of water-soluble nutrients like the B vitamins and magnesium, which are necessary building blocks for GABA (6), the calming inhibitory neurotransmitter discussed previously.

In short, regularly drinking caffeinated beverages causes reduced brain and blood GABA, adenosine inhibition and loss of nutrients needed to make GABA. This leads to less available calming GABA and sleep-supporting adenosine, possible adverse effects on your myelin sheathing and increased anxiety, rumination, insomnia and panic.

My cold turkey experience

In 2010, when I began my OCD recovery, I learned from my naturopath that caffeine wasn’t a friend of my nervous system.

So, I went cold turkey on tea, coffee and cola.

I was sick of being sick with OCD and ready to go all-in and make changes. OCD had been in my life for 19 years at that point. I knew if I didn’t act now, I would likely spend the rest of my life seriously ill and unable to fulfil my potential. Feeling better – being able to LIVE – was worth way more to me than the taste and aroma of coffee. It was time to give my nervous system the tender loving care it deserved, by both nourishing it AND taking the load off it.

I experienced benefits within the first month of quitting caffeine and making other changes to my diet and lifestyle. I felt calmer, OCD spikes were less intense, and I was falling asleep more easily. My new state of increasing calm was such a relief and a sign I was on the right path. I didn’t drink a sip of coffee again until 2016. These days, I drink coffee about once a month. I favour plunger coffee but if I do have a café coffee, I’m that rare person requesting “single shot, as weak as possible, please”.

Three things for you to know and action to take

Now that you have a better understanding of how caffeine impacts your nervous system and mental health, I encourage you to consider giving up caffeinated drinks (tea, coffee, energy drinks, cola) for one month and see how you feel. What have you got to lose? I’m confident the benefits you feel will outweigh the loss of caffeinated drinks.
Quitting caffeine doesn’t have to be forever. We are all individuals and some people find that after a year or two, once they are well, they can gently reintroduce caffeine and enjoy it as a treat (not a habit).
And, you don’t have to go cold turkey. You could start by reducing the amount of caffeine you drink from, say, three coffees a day to two a day, and then one a day, then half a cup a day, until you are caffeine-free. It may be advisable to taper down in this way if you are drinking a lot of caffeine to mitigate possible withdrawal effects that can last a few days (fatigue, headaches, flat mood).