Consuming too many caffeinated drinks can cause you to feel jittery, anxious, and like your heart is pounding. Excess caffeine can mirror symptoms of an anxiety attack, upset your stomach, and increase your heart rate and blood pressure.
There are a few steps you can take to counteract caffeine and offset its side effects, helping you feel better as the caffeine wears off.
If you’ve had too many cups of coffee, you have to wait for the caffeine to leave your system. There is no simple, fast way to counteract caffeine. However, you can take steps to help ease caffeine’s side effects.
Here’s what to do if you have too much caffeine:
- Practice deep breathing: Deep breathing exercises help activate your parasympathetic nervous system, which tells your body to rest and digest. This can help your body relax, lowering anxiety and a racing heart rate.
- Hydrate: Caffeine is a diuretic, which means it increases urination and can lead to dehydration. Drinking more water helps you rehydrate and reduces symptoms like rapid heartbeat and dizziness.
- Eat a snack: Food can help slow down the absorption of caffeine in your bloodstream. Choosing a snack that contains protein, fat, and fiber can also help lower blood sugar levels, which can help calm jitters.
- Choose magnesium- or potassium-rich foods: These minerals may help calm your nervous system and muscles. Potassium also helps regulate your heartbeat. Reach for foods like spinach, avocados, brown rice, or bananas to get a boost of both magnesium and potassium.
- Perform light exercise: A short walk or gentle stretching may increase blood circulation enough to help your body process caffeine more efficiently. Movement also helps reduce feelings of anxiety.
- Avoid other stimulants: More stimulants will make symptoms worse. Avoid caffeinated products like teas, soft drinks, or chocolate, as well as other stimulants like nicotine and certain prescription medications.
Caffeine is a central nervous system stimulant, which means it stimulates chemicals in your brain that increase energy and focus. It takes about 45 minutes to an hour for caffeine to absorb into the bloodstream through the stomach and small intestine.
After about 15 minutes to two hours, caffeine levels peak, and you feel that boost of energy. At the same time, your liver begins to break down caffeine. Consuming too much caffeine can make you feel overstimulated. This can cause side effects like anxiety, restlessness, irregular heart rate, irritability, and muscle twitches. You may also have an upset stomach and feel dehydrated.
How long it takes caffeine to wear off depends on its half-life, which is the time it takes your body to remove half of a substance. For the average person, caffeine has a half-life of about five hours. So, it takes about five hours for half of the caffeine you consume to leave your bloodstream. This is also when most people notice caffeine symptoms go away.
However, caffeine’s effects can last anywhere from 2.5 to 15 hours. Factors that impact how your body processes caffeine include:
- Age: The body’s ability to process caffeine slows down with age, and older adults will process caffeine more slowly.
- Pregnancy: Caffeine processing slows during pregnancy, and can increase its half-life to 15 hours. Talk to your doctor about how much caffeine is safe for you during pregnancy.
- Weight: People with larger body sizes tend to metabolize caffeine faster.
- Liver function: Having a liver condition or injury makes it more challenging for the liver to process caffeine.
- Hormonal birth control: Studies have shown that people taking hormonal birth control pills can take longer to metabolize caffeine.
- Smoking: People who smoke process caffeine up to 50% faster than non-smokers.
Certain foods, medications, and habits can make the effects of caffeine worse. If you’ve consumed too much caffeine, keep in mind:
- Don’t panic: Stress can make symptoms like increased heart rate, anxiety, and blood pressure worse.
- Don’t make yourself throw up: You may think vomiting will help get the caffeine out of your body, but it’s more likely to dehydrate you further.
- Avoid foods high in sugar: While eating can help reduce caffeine’s side effects, skip foods high in sugar. Sugary foods and drinks increase blood sugar levels, making you feel more jittery.
- Avoid high-intensity workouts: Light exercise can help counteract the effects of caffeine. However, strenuous workouts can elevate your heart rate and anxiety even further.
- Don’t take depressants: Depressants are substances that decrease brain stimulation to help calm you down. Depressants like alcohol and some prescription and illicit drugs can cause dangerous effects when mixed with stimulants like caffeine.
Too much caffeine can cause caffeine toxicity, or caffeine overdose. Deadly caffeine overdoses are rare, but caffeine intoxication can lead to severe complications like seizures, muscle breakdown (rhabdomyolysis), kidney injury, and cardiac arrest.
Seek emergency medical care or call poison control right away if you or someone with you has the following signs or symptoms of a caffeine overdose:
- Trouble breathing
- Muscle twitching
- Rapid or irregular heartbeat
- Hallucinations or confusion
- Lack of alertness
- Seizures
- Nausea and vomiting
- Fever
Consuming too much caffeine can make you feel anxious and jittery. You can help your body calm down and feel better by hydrating, eating a light meal, trying gentle movement, and practicing deep breathing.
It takes most people about five hours for the effects of too much caffeine to wear off. Calming your nervous system and stabilizing your blood sugar can help reduce caffeine-related anxiety and jitters.
