We have written a lot about the health effects of coffee. In general more coffee is better in reducing your risk of type II diabetes, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, depression and various types of cancer. But what is a dangerous amount of coffee if you get carried away? Mashable reports that the world’s strongest coffee which is served in Adelaide, Australia at the Viscous Café is pretty strong.
A cafe is serving up the coffee to rival all others and it looks almost fatal.
The suitably-named Ass Kicker is being served at Viscous Cafe in Adelaide, Australia and it contains the caffeine equivalent of 80 standard cups-o-joe.
Legend has it, the first incarnation of the beverage was made for an emergency department nurse who needed to stay awake. The drink was consumed over a period of two days and kept the nurse up for three days in total.
A regular eight ounce cup of coffee contains about 95 milligrams of caffeine. Heavy coffee drinkers (five cups a day) consume just less than 500 milligrams. A large coffee served at the Australian café contains five grams (5,000 milligrams) of caffeine. Is that a dangerous amount of coffee? The café has a sign warning folks with high blood pressure, heart disease.
Lethal Dose of Caffeine
According to experts the lethal dose of caffeine is around 10 grams for an adult. That would be two cup of the Australian coffee chugged down back to back. According to Popular Science discusses how much caffeine it would take to kill you. It turns out that document death from caffeine overdose is rare.
So if a true caffeine overdose is so rare, why has caffeine-perhaps the most widely used drug in North America-been blamed for contributing to a handful of deaths over the years? Perhaps because it almost always works in concert with other far more nefarious factors such as alcohol or heart conditions.
Individuals with heart diseases that predispose to fatal rhythm disturbances are more likely to die from a large amount of coffee than someone with a totally healthy heart. Too much caffeine raises blood pressure. If you already have high blood pressure and drink a large amount of coffee, or one of the Australian varieties, you may see a dangerous spike in your pressure. Systolic pressure over 180 or diastolic over 120 constitutes a hypertensive crisis. This requires immediate attention and treatment to prevent stroke, heart attack, loss of kidney function and more. In short what is a dangerous amount of coffee is different if you are totally young and healthy versus if you have heart problems, high blood pressure or other conditions that may be made worse by too much caffeine.
Common Sense
If you need to stay awake on the road and want to use coffee for that purpose stick with a normal cup of strong coffee and stop every couple of hours to refill. This way you will not be taking a chance of having an overdose.