Can Caffeine Boost Flow States?

Welcome to Flow Radio. I'm Ryan Wicks, Chief of Staff at the Flow Research Collective. Today we're exploring how caffeine can help us reach flow states. I'm joined by Dr. Michael Mannino, our Chief Science Officer, and our special guest, Dr. Nicholas Reich. Dr. Reich is a neuroscientist and high-performance coach. He works as a research associate at the University of Cambridge, focusing on Alzheimer's disease therapies. His research includes developing treatments that can protect our brains, which ties into how caffeine might help us today. Today we'll discuss insights from the 2024 paper, Using Caffeine as a Means to Induce Flow States, co-authored by Dr. Wright, Dr. Mannino, and our executive director, Stephen Kotler.

So thank you for the introduction. And the reason why I'm interested in caffeine is because it doesn't just seem to improve flow. But it also appears to be protective to the brain, and there's quite significant literature behind it. In fact, to give you an idea, there's a dementia-based study that looked at caffeine intake and correlated it with the risk of developing dementia. And what was found is that 3 to 5 cups of caffeine a day, or coffee more precisely, reduced dementia risk by 65%. So once again, we have a halved risk of dementia by drinking enough coffee. And a similar thing is seen in Parkinson's disease, in fact, where caffeine appears to improve motor function. And in this case, it's quite relevant for dopamine neurons, especially because caffeine appears to protect these dopamine neurons in Parkinson's. And Parkinson's disease is essentially an anti-flow state because you lose the dopamine neurons that not only produce movement, but also are involved in motivation, drive, attention, and focus. So, of course, if you lose these dopamine neurons, flow will be very difficult to achieve. And the fact that caffeine had a beneficial effect in these Parkinson's patients is very promising. And related to this, I can share a little story of one of my colleagues at the Dementia Research Institute. In fact, he's a team leader of the animal studies we do. Partially. And what he did in the past was testing caffeine in mice. So more precisely, not caffeine, but a more specific compound. Now, caffeine binds to adenosine receptors, and what he tested was a so-called adenosine A2A receptor antagonist. So this one only binds to adenosine 2A receptors. So a more specific form of caffeine, you could say. And what happened is that he administered this to Huntington mice. Huntington mice, they produce so-called Huntington aggregates in the brain. It's a genetic disease, but it's somewhat similar to Alzheimer's because in Alzheimer's we have amyloid beta plaques, we have tangles made of the protein tau, and in Huntington we have aggregates made of this Huntington protein. So we have clumps in the brain in all of these diseases. And he gave these mice these adenosine or caffeine-like compound. He put it in water and the mice drank this. And what happened is that these Huntington aggregates in the brain of these mice disappeared. And if we actually look at how this works in terms of biology, what seems to happen is that this improves dopamine D2 receptor signaling. And if you look at what these dopamine receptors do in cells, they seem to activate autophagy. Autophagy is a mechanism that removes waste products in brain cells, and there are many brain cells that have dopamine D2 receptors. It's not just in dopamine neurons, it's also in the hippocampus, the region for long-term memory, and the prefrontal cortex where conscious thought takes place. And it appears that, again, caffeine produces these effects. It stimulates autophagy. It clears up whatever debris is in these cells. So this is the technical way of how caffeine can actually be protective in the brain. There are probably other effects, other things have been reported, but less is known. So the specific effects of how caffeine works still needs some research. But looking at this, I think this is very exciting. We have now a drug that has benefits for the brain. We know that dopamine neurons are crucial for flow, so we, of course, want to preserve them when we get old. And now we are potentially talking about a compound that can also improve flow. So, I think these are very exciting times and we have access to it freely. Everyone can get it in the supermarket, so we should definitely use it.

Well, Nick, or Dr. Reich, I did read a study, I think it was a recent one, back to the Parkinson's about, and it was a longitudinal study. So it was over like a 13-year period and they looked at, I think over 184,000 participants or subjects and they found that yeah, they reduced caffeine and you could go back to the dosage there, but it reduces the risk of Parkinson's disease by like 60, again, 63%. Pretty, pretty similar by, by affecting— because caffeine induces dopamine, which you could talk about a little bit later, like caffeine, and you just did one of the mechanisms that induces dopamine affinity. And because there's a loss of dopamine in Parkinson's disease, that is, you know, neuroprotective against future future loss of dopaminergic neurons?

Absolutely. Dopamine signal is highly neuroprotective. I've just worked with a gut-like peptide, it's called cholecystokinin, CCK, and this one also appears to be protective by releasing dopamine in the brain. And here we have caffeine that seems to do a similar thing. So this is definitely something we should be using.

Yet, Nick and Michael, you're both referring to dopamine affinity here, and I guess in my lay interpretation, I want to think of that as boosting dopamine in the brain, but I don't think that that's right after kind of hearing a more technical explanation of what's going on, Nick.

So could you unpack dopamine affinity a little bit more for us and Now I should talk about what caffeine does because then it's also clear what actually happens. Now, when we talk about dopamine affinity, we usually talk about how well dopamine binds to the receptor, but caffeine does a few things. In fact, caffeine increases the release of dopamine slightly. So it seems to improve that by 30% approximately. So we have 30% more dopamine in the brain. But it also seems to improve signaling through the dopamine receptor. And it does this by binding to so-called adenosine receptors. Adenosine receptors that bind to dopamine receptors. And these adenosine receptors are activated by adenosine. Adenosine is a molecule that is produced in your brain after you're awake, after you do physical activity, after you do mental activity. So adenosine keeps accumulating in your brain and it causes some sort of sleep pressure. What this adenosine then does is activate the adenosine receptor, and the adenosine receptor then blocks the dopamine receptor. And this makes sense if you think about the function of the dopamine receptor, because what the dopamine receptor does is cause a feeling of energy, feelings of pleasure, feelings of motivation, And adenosine does the opposite. It shuts down these dopamine receptors and makes you tired. So it makes you unmotivated. You don't want to do things anymore. It makes you a bit groggy, a bit moody. So these are all the things we experience if you're sleep deprived, in fact. And again, caffeine prevents this because caffeine binds on the adenosine receptors, and that way adenosine cannot have its function. It blocks the function, and that way dopamine receptors stay active. For longer. So, you have more active dopamine receptors and at the same time, you have a slight increase in dopamine release in the brain. So, combined, you have more dopamine signaling across these receptors, which has these different effects.

Okay. Nick, question. Can you just describe a little bit for everybody? It sounds like one of the two mechanisms of how the brain works, all neurons can be either excitatory or inhibitory. And there's excitation and inhibition in the brain and the balance of those two things out. And then there's also disinhibition. And so I'm just wondering if you could maybe frame just for a little bit of neuroscience education for all our viewers, because this is so important for how the brain operates, this idea of neurons being excitatory or inhibitory. Can you, just define that and then maybe relate that, or does it relate to what you were just saying about the relationship between adenosine receptors and dopamine receptors then becoming active because adenosine does not?

Now, the brain is of course a complicated thing because we not only have different neurotransmitters and receptors accordingly, but we also have different cell types. So like you said, the neuron can be excitatory and activate other neurons, neuron can be inhibitory and block other neurons in the brain. Now going back to the neurotransmitters, usually you can say some of these activate brain cells, some of them inactivate them. Dopamine, for example, is a neurotransmitter that activates neurons usually. The same with glutamate. This is usually the most commonly released ones, and you have other ones that tone a activity down. GABA, for example, this one makes you more calm if you have more GABA in your brain. Serotonin also usually has more of a calming effect. So although there are many different receptors it can bind to, but this is just generally, you have different molecules, some of them activate neurons, some of these molecules downregulate neurons, make them less active. And then of course, you have different brain types and this is where it's getting very complicated usually because one neuron can activate an inhibitory neuron and the inhibitory neuron can then block another excitatory neuron. So you have many circuits in the brain that signal to each other. And I think for simplicity, what I'm referring to is actually a specific brain region. So I think what we are mostly interested in is the reward system. So I can cover this if you're mostly interested in how it works, how it relates to flow potentially.

Yes, please.

Yeah. So looking into this, let's look at how the brain actually looks like. So we have the brainstem, literally it's a stem, and at the top of the brainstem, we have a little knob. This is the midbrain. And around this, we have an outer layer, which is— this one is called the cerebral cortex. So these are the 3 principal parts of the brain, you I should say, and the dopamine neurons are in the brainstem at the very top. And we have two regions where these dopamine neurons are located. We have the ventral tegmental area, VTA, and we have the substantia nigra. And the thing that you want to know probably is what these dopamine neurons do. VTA is reward. That's about reward and motivation. I will talk about this in a moment. And we have the substantia nigra, which is all about movement, moving towards things. So this is the one that's mostly impacted in Parkinson's disease. So if you lose these dopamine neurons, you have trouble initiating movements. But going back to the VTA, these are the dopamine neurons we're interested in because they send dopamine to another brain region in the midbrain, which is called the nucleus accumbens. The nucleus accumbens is the reward center. So if this one is activated, if dopamine is released into the nucleus accumbens and binds to dopamine receptors in this brain area, then we feel certain things that are related to pleasure and motivation. And there are actually two dopamine receptors. Dopamine D1, this is the one related to pleasure. So if the dopamine D1 receptor is activated, you feel very good, you feel nice, you feel pleasure. And then we have the dopamine D2 receptor in the nucleus accumbens. And if this one is activated, it lowers effort aversion. What this means is that we are more motivated to push, so we become more hardcore essentially. So the stronger activated this receptor is, the more willing to push we are, walking through nails essentially if there's enough stimulation of these receptors. And this is also why we're interested in them because this is all crucial for flow. Again, we want to be motivated, we want to be hardcore, we want to feel good because all of these things allow us to dive into activities, to push harder, and as such, allow us to get into a flow state more easily. And as I mentioned earlier, caffeine improves the affinity or it facilitates signaling through these dopamine receptors and releases additional dopamine into the nucleus accumbens. So it has these two amazing effects.

Yeah. And you were saying that the adenosine also has different kinds of receptors, right? Not just one. So the complexity of the brain is enormous. It's so vast.

We have to shut this down eventually, of course. We cannot be on edge 24/7. So that's why adenosine exists because adenosine then shuts the dopamine signaling down. It binds to adenosine receptors and these adenosine receptors block the dopamine D1 and dopamine D2 receptors. We become groggy, we become moody, we become not motivated, and eventually, we are too tired to even get out or walk around anymore. We lay down and we sleep. So, this is a biological mechanism. And while we sleep, adenosine in the brain is cleared off and we are good to go again.

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Yeah. So, so maybe let's, let's take a step back and define flow. More broadly, and then maybe just frame the discussion, the rest of the discussion that we're going to have on how caffeine not only affects the brain in general, which is what you were just talking about, but let's talk about how caffeine affects flow specifically. So for all of our viewers, let's just define flow. So we can talk about flow as being in the zone, right? It's this optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and we perform our best. Where we are performing a specific task that we bring a certain skill level to that we're good at. And we have all these prerequisites or what we're calling flow triggers that lead to the state. And let's call it a cognitive state or a mental state or a psychological state. More broadly, we can even talk about it as an altered state of consciousness. Flow exists on a spectrum. We can be in a macro flow state, where it can literally be an altered state of consciousness, or that can be dialed down in a micro flow state. These so-called flow triggers or prerequisites have been well studied. And we actually published a paper back in 2022 called The First Few Seconds of Flow, How the Brain Transitions into a Flow State, where we sort of operationalize and define these prerequisites. But complete concentration, having clear goals. One of the biggest flow triggers is the challenge-skill balance. So that's where the task that you're actually performing is not too easy or not too difficult. Novelty, risk. There's a bunch of external behavioral triggers and internal ones, environmental triggers, and then internal behavioral triggers as well. And we know that flow has all these benefits, right? The increases in well-being, life satisfaction, quality of life, neuroprotection has also been studied as well. When we're in the zone, when we're in the state itself, there's these things, these characteristics that show up, right? We have loss of our self-consciousness or a dampening of our self-consciousness. Our perception of time changes. There's a richness to what we're experiencing in terms of our conscious perception and so on. This is a very well-studied state. I think one of the things that caffeine— well, let's broadly frame the discussion this way. So, caffeine affects, as Nick, you were saying, neurochemistry, right? So, it affects the neuromodulation and neurotransmitters of the brain. And in doing that, it affects the neuroelectricity. So different brain waves like alpha, beta, theta, and gamma, which we can talk about. And by affecting brain waves, it affects the way different brain areas communicate with one another. So the dynamics, the networks of the brain as well, which we can talk about, which we'll talk about. So I think what it does is by doing all of these things, it affects it facilitates the brain or gets the brain ready for a flow state. So it makes it easier for these flow triggers maybe to happen. And the flow triggers, what they do is they lower cognitive load, they increase dopamine and norepinephrine, which focuses our attention and has all these other downstream effects on the state itself. So I think one of the things that we can say is that caffeine facilitates the brain for entering a flow state. Would you say that's correct?

Absolutely. In fact, caffeine also has impact on network activity. So of course, I've just talked about the neurotransmitters, and it's not just dopamine, actually, there are other ones, in particular norepinephrine. Or adrenaline. So this is related to alertness. And of course, we want to be alert. We need to be fit and awake in order to dive into an activity, to do it properly, and to get into the flow state to begin with. And in this case, I think I can talk about this briefly. What caffeine does is again release adrenaline. In the rest of our body, what happens is that the release of adrenaline, it improves blood pressure, it improves, uh, improves blood flow and heart rate. So it makes us physically more ready if we have a lot of adrenaline in our system. And what caffeine does is activate the sympathetic nervous system. So this is the part of our nervous system that is again related to alertness, that releases adrenaline, and adrenaline makes action ready. This also happens in the brain, and in the brain, it's the same molecule, but we call it norepinephrine. This is because it's produced in a specific brain area, also in the brainstem. This one is called locus coeruleus. Locus coeruleus. Never get it right. Anyways, this is the brain area where principally norepinephrine is produced. And norepinephrine is then sprinkled into other brain areas, distributed everywhere, and increases alertness. And what caffeine again does is exactly that. It releases adrenaline in the body. Norepinephrine in the brain makes us more alert, more energized. And we actually see this effect on a global scale in network activity. One of the things that is very interesting about caffeine is that if it is drunk, if you drink caffeine every day, alertness levels increase. So you have a long-term increase in brain alertness. You have a long-term increase in action readiness. But at the same time, there's also downside to it because what happens if you're too hyped up? If you're too hyped up, it causes anxiety. It might even cause panic. And this is what we see with caffeine as well. If you drink too much caffeine, it starts to have negative effects such as anxiety, such as panic. And these, of course, we want to avoid because for the flow state, we want to become ruthless, as Stephen Cutler would put it. We don't want to overshoot and be anxious, but we also don't want to be too easy on our alertness because if we're half sleepy, obviously, we won't get much done. So with caffeine, we really have to try titrate it, find the right amount of caffeine that maximizes our alertness without making us anxious. And figuring that out is, of course, part of a protocol that we can share later on. I've developed one to be precise to keep caffeine in the right range, but it requires some testing. There's also genetic differences in how many side effects people experience. That's very important to mention. Some people can tolerate lots and lots of caffeine. Other people are genetically more prone to the side effects like anxiety. So those people have to be more careful with caffeine. But overall, we have this effect on dopamine, we have this effect on alertness. And again, this effect in alertness is actually seen long-term. So, you have this long-term increase in alertness in the brain as long as you drink caffeine. And definitely, this is seen on the network scale. Yeah.

Okay. So, before we go to the network scale, so again, what flow triggers do is they increase dopamine and norepinephrine. Locus coeruleus, by the way, means blue spot because—

Let's think about risk. Risk is very exciting. If you jump down a cliff, you might die, but maybe you survive, and there's a dopamine kick from, hey, I got this, I can do this. And then we have the adrenaline from the excitement. Could also be anxiety if you're standing at the cliff. And again, this is what these flow triggers do. They release exactly these neurochemicals that caffeine also seems to release in the brain. Lots of dopamine, norepinephrine.

So it facilitates the brain for a flow state. Doesn't actually— like, so I just want to be clear, it doesn't actually— so let's talk about correlation and causation. I guess that's the point I'm trying to get at, right? The caffeine doesn't cause a flow state. We're not saying that, right? We're saying— and even in the title of the paper, caffeine as a means to induce flow states. So just for the clarity, clarification here, caffeine can correlate, let's say, doesn't cause a flow state, but it can lead to a more easily caused flow state if you're doing all of these other behaviors and the flow triggers are present and so on.

Absolutely. Flow only occurs if you do an activity. It could be any activity. It could be video gaming, it could be work, it could be a conversation sometimes if it's stimulating. And the flow triggers, they just release the neurochemicals needed for the flow state to occur. Caffeine does the same. It releases the neurochemicals that are also needed, dopamine, norepinephrine. And if these neurochemicals are there in your brain, it's easy for you to get into a flow state.

You know, one of the tools that we use here, or models, should I say, that we use here at the Flow Research Collective, to help our clients develop self-awareness about flow states and when they're getting into flow, in transitioning out of flow states is the flow cycle. And Nicholas and Michael, as I hear you talk about, adrenaline, norepinephrine, and dopamine makes me think about the front end of a flow state, which we refer to as the struggle phase. Are we talking about similar things here?

Absolutely. Now, flow, of course, has to go through different stages. Michael, you are the flow cycle expert. Can you talk about the cycle stages briefly?

Yes, sure. So as Ryan said, we have the front end, which is the struggle phase. So this has to do with the more explicit learning and some frustration. Some might call it pre-performance anxiety. And the flow cycle can exist on different timescales. So this can happen really quickly or it can happen over a longer period of time. Then we have the release phase. So this is sort of a felt sense of letting go. Physiologically, you're in your brain, in your mind, there's this sort of sense of letting go. We talk about low-grade physical activities for helping us take our attention off the thing. And then we release into the flow state itself. And this is where we have both of that coactivation. To talk about the flow cycle physiologically, we have the coactivation of the sympathetic response, which you were referring to earlier, the fight or flight or more alert. But then also activation is the parasympathetic, which is the rest and digest and the more of a calm. So flow itself is this unique combination of being alert, with an appropriate level of arousal, but also a calm sereneness to it as well. And then on the back end is the recovery phase as well. So there's the, the body's, its flow is very energetically efficient, but it uses a lot of energy. So we recover after the flow state and then go back into the struggle. So it's not this sort of like binary thing. It's this sort of cyclical process. And we're actually doing research now on identifying some of the physiological physiological and neurobiological associations with each different phase of the flow cycle itself.

Yeah, that's, that's perfect. But Michael, it begs the question, is there an optimal time or specific times when caffeine is most effective for happy— for helping us achieve a flow state? Is it at the front end of flow or do we have any idea? Have we looked at that yet?

Now, looking at what Michael just explained, caffeine seems to be very useful in the struggle phase because in the struggle phase we have to get adjusted to what we are doing. We are not good at it yet. It's not automatic yet. It's very taxing for us mentally and physically because we haven't gotten it down yet. So in this phase, caffeine helps enormously because caffeine improves alertness. We are more awake. We make less mistakes. It improves the dopamine signaling in the brain, which makes us feel a little bit better. This is not a requirement, but if we feel a little bit better, it's easier, of course, to do it and stick with it. That's dopamine D1 receptors, pleasure. We have the dopamine D2 receptors, which increase motivation. So you're more willing to push. which is, of course, very important if you want to stay in a flow state. You need to have an urge. You need to have the cognitive energy to keep pushing. And interestingly enough, there's an effect that I haven't talked about yet, which is heart rate variability. Now, heart rate variability is basically how variable your heartbeats are, as the name suggests. So let's say you have a beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat. Basically, so the rhythm between these heartbeats is different. And the more variable this rhythm between the heartbeat is, the more stress-resistant we appear to be, because this has been correlated with stress appraisal in the cortex. So the more heart variability we have, the better we can deal with stress. On a physical level, and of course, also on a cognitive level. On a physical level, for example, if your heartbeat can go from 0 to 100 in 2 seconds, you are a good sprinter probably. But this also appears to be the case if we do cognitive work, that we're more flexible. This heart rate variability is actually associated with the relaxed phase, funny enough, with the parasympathetic nervous system, what Michael talked about. This is what we actually see in a flow state, that we have higher HRV. Higher heart rate variability, higher parasympathetic nerve activity. And research suggests that, funny enough, even though caffeine is a stimulant, if you drink caffeine and you're actually used to drinking it, it seems to activate the resting part of your sympathetic nervous system. So it actually relaxes you while you're alert. And this is very useful for flow because now we are in a situation where we are highly alert from the adrenaline, we are highly motivated and we feel good from the dopamine, and we have the high heart rate variability, which means that we stay calm, we are mentally calm, and this is the ideal state to get into flow.

So, and on the struggle phase, so by back to the phrase you were using before, and we wrote about in the paper, lowering effort aversion. So that's why it's better for the struggle phase, but it's also better for the struggle phase, or it helps with the struggle phase, it's like maybe a hack for the struggle phase to increase your heart rate variability to make you more resilient and to increase your stress threshold, your ceiling with stress to be able to get through the struggle phase.

Since we're talking about it, there are some human studies showing that caffeine consumption increases when people are stressed. And this is probably a mechanism to deal with stress. So there are many mechanisms with which caffeine can help deal with stress, more energy. Of course, it makes us calmer cognitively if we don't overdo it, that is. And again, the correlation studies suggest exactly that, that people use caffeine if they're stressed because it gives them energy, allows them to deal with the challenges, and that of course means more flow.

So onto the idea of, we were talking about brain networks. And caffeine's effect on the dynamics of the brain and the way different areas of the brain are communicating with one another. The connectivity, connectivity, let's, let's say brain connectivity. One of the aspects that flow or caffeine has on flow possibly is it lowers the default mode network of the brain and simultaneously increases the central executive network or attention network. So the default mode network is this network of the brain that is involved in self-referential thinking and mind wandering and rumination. And it's also involved in social consciousness as well. But this idea of like, it's just endogenously produced activity. So activity coming from the inside, not like like external stimuli, but just internal stimuli. So thinking about the future, thinking about yourself, having your just mind wander, not really focused on the outside world, but on the inside world. And it's also been called the imagination network, I think by Scott Barry Kaufman, actually. So it's involved in like imagination as well. And it has advantages disadvantages if it's overactive, right? And so, we know from a lot of research that breathwork, meditation, and flow, all those kinds of things actually sort of in one way or another lower the default mode network activity so that you can focus on the task that you're engaged in and the outside world. And so, caffeine Nick, can you talk a little bit about this, lowers the default mode network activity, again, facilitating the possibility of getting into a flow state?

Absolutely. Like Michael just said, there's the default mode network. This one is related to daydreaming. So, that's when we are not focused at all. That's essentially the way I would put it. And you can also measure this in terms of electrical activity in the brain. And if we have high alpha power, as it's called, this is electricity measured in the 8 to 12 Hz range. In this range, alpha power, this is correlated with default mode network. So if we are daydreaming a lot, we have a lot of alpha wave activity in the brain. And what caffeine does is downregulate this. So this is probably related to, again, the release of norepinephrine in the brain, which makes us more alert. It activates neurons, and all of a sudden, we have less alpha power in the brain. And that is what these network studies suggest, that it has this global effect on action readiness, this global effect on alertness if you drink caffeine regularly. You don't even have to drink it acutely. If you just drink it regularly, you have this basal increase in alertness in the brain, but you also have the basal increase in anxiety. So this might be a downside for some people who are very anxious naturally. But again, if we're talking flow, if we're talking action readiness, this is of course very useful because all of a sudden our brain is now more awake than it would otherwise be if you drink caffeine regularly. This is of course very useful for paying attention, for concentrating, and these things.

Well, I think I might take us off course here. So Michael, if my question does, please please loop us back around here, but one of my experiences with caffeine is that at times it can have this inverse effect of alertness where I can drink so much caffeine that I actually, I feel tired and sleepy. And I've been so curious about that effect. How is that working in my brain? What's the mechanism behind that? Where too much coffee puts me to bed.

I think what's happening here is that you have a crash, a caffeine crash, most likely. So how much— what are we talking? How long does the caffeine last in your case?

You know, typically I would say I start drinking coffee around 7 in the morning till about noon. And that caffeine crash is As you frame it, it happened a lot. I guess it happened when I was younger, when I was in college, really kind of cramming and studying for tests or exams or writing papers to where it would be late afternoons and I would still be consuming heavy amounts of caffeine and I would find myself asleep at the desk in the library.

Now, there can be several things could be at play here. The first thing is how much sleep did you actually get? Because if you don't get enough sleep, you have adenosine building up in your brain. Caffeine, of course, prevents that adenosine binds. But as soon as caffeine is gone, all of the adenosine will bind and you will get sleepy almost instantly. So that's why no matter what you do, if you're interested in flow, you sleep 8 hours a day. I think this is a bare minimum if you're interested in high performance. In fact, the actual absolute minimum is 7 hours. If you sleep less than 7 hours, you see a decrease in performance. But I would definitely suggest more than that. You should definitely get 8 hours of sleep a day minimum, I would say. So making sure that your adenosine is cleared out of your brain while you sleep. The other thing is, of course, then with caffeine, there could be many things at play. Some things actually increase caffeine absorption, some things slow them down. So sometimes some people it's absorbed very quickly, it's out of your system very quickly, and you lose the effect relatively quickly. So there could be many things at play. I think at your case specifically is probably, how long did you sleep? That would be my first question in fact.

Oh, when I was in college. Yeah, these times that I'm referring to, not enough is what I would say.

and I think this is where it's coming from because usually what you would expect is an increase in alertness that slowly but surely drops. Caffeine lasts about 3 to 5 hours in the bloodstream before the concentrations are halved, and you seem to be an eager student, so you probably had a few sleepless nights, a lot of adenosine building up, and the caffeine is actually more effective if you're sleep deprived. Absolutely. Because it blocks the adenosine from binding. So if you're sleep deprived, caffeine works better, but then you have the problem that the adenosine is still there and you have to deal with it once the caffeine is gone. So definitely, if you want to optimize this, make sure you get your sleep in, remove all of the adenosine, and use caffeine strategically. And I would suggest doing it in the morning because if you do it too late, it might interfere with sleep. And I've tested a lot with it as well. It depends on whether you eat a lot in the evening. If you don't eat much in the evening, you drink caffeine, it could be very difficult to fall asleep. If you eat a carbohydrate-rich meal, you have an easier time falling asleep, you might be able to handle more caffeine. But in terms of timing, I would suggest you do it in the morning. You take a sufficient dose that gives you all of the effects you want gives you adrenaline release, gives you dopamine release, gives you HRV. And that would, that those probably be at least 200 to 250 milligrams that you want to consume. And then you ideally do your Flow session immediately as it is recommended in fact by the Flow Research Collective, doing your Flow, most important Flow work in the morning. You do your work and you're good. You get your good night's sleep and you repeat next day. I think this is probably the most effective way of using caffeine without getting any unnecessary side effects.

So, so, Nick, maybe now's a good time. So I have two questions actually. Maybe now's a good time to talk about your caffeine protocol and more sustainable. So we have it on a daily basis, how you're using it, but how does that look like over the course of a week? I want you to talk about caffeine fasting and how that plays into this flow specifically, but I want to lead into that question with another point. And a recent study came out on flow proneness and it just came out a few weeks ago actually here in 2024. Caffeine, and I'll relate this back to caffeine. So that's what I want to get at, like this idea of flow proneness or proneness to getting into flow, combining that with our own genetic predisposition to our caffeine proneness, if you will. So that's kind of how I'm leading into this question. Question. The title of the study was called Can Flow Proneness Be Protective Against Mental and Cardiovascular Health Problems? And this is a genetically informed prospective cohort study. And this study actually showed that the answer is, is yes, flow, flow proneness, individuals with higher flow proneness had decreased risk for depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, stress-related and cardiovascular disorders. Which is huge.

Absolutely. To just intervene briefly, sorry to interrupt, caffeine has the same effects. There's actually some studies showing that caffeine reduces the risk of depression, reduces the risk of suicide and these things. And this is all related again to, as you pointed out, the dopamine pathways that we have there.

Yeah, that's exactly the, the, what I was, that's great. And I'll shameless plug here. Well, maybe not so shameless, but in that study, which just came out a couple weeks ago, they actually cited Flow Research Collective training program in the introduction of that study with a link.

I mean, they know what they're doing.

Of course they know what they're doing. That was, that was pretty amazing that you have that in a scientific paper in Nature. So going back to your— this, this relationship between flow proneness and caffeine proneness, let's just say, or how that affects your system. And how that can be protective against all these things as well. So talk a little bit about that and then your own caffeine protocol and then maybe how fasting has to do with that as well. Caffeine fasting.

Now, actually related to what you mentioned earlier, why is it that increased dopamine signaling in your brain causes you to be better off? I think there are many reasons for it. Of course, you'll probably have better attitude in general. You're probably more positive, you feel better. And we know that, of course, optimists appear to live longer. So we have something there. And I think the reason why is because what happens if you're depressed? If you're depressed, you don't care. You don't care about yourself. You don't care about what you're doing. You don't care about what you're eating. You don't care about getting good sleep in, so you're less likely to do things that promote your lifestyle, that promote your health, promote your well-being. So just if you feel better by itself, basically, if you're more excited about the things that you do, you're more likely to do things that are beneficial for you. Maybe you earn more money because you're more motivated to actually do things. You will probably go to the gym, you will probably have a better nutrition because you care. And I think this is why just dopamine signaling by itself enhancing it without causing addiction, that is, is probably beneficial for you. That's actually a quick discourse I can make. Don't cause addiction. So don't use amphetamines to get into flow. This is a terrible idea because there are drugs that increase dopamine in the brain massively, like cocaine, like amphetamines. The problem is that you get addicted to the substance, and if you're addicted to the substance, you're not interested in doing things anymore. All you want is take the substance. So this is not proflow. This is idiotic. So don't do this. So the good thing about caffeine is it's not too bad. You can stay off of caffeine. It's fine because it only releases a little bit of dopamine, not so much that it makes you addictive. For example, smoking releases dopamine as well, but the dopamine that smoking releases is so high that it becomes addictive again. With caffeine, it's not so bad. You can go a day with less caffeine or no caffeine, you're fine. So I think this is exactly why caffeine might be one of the very few things, substances that can really improve flow without messing with your dopamine reward system too much. Facilitates it, but it doesn't overwhelm you.

Okay.

Yeah, Nick, you pointed to— I pointed to not using amphetamines to get into flow, and I understand that caffeine can be helpful for people with ADHD, and I know that a very prescribed medication for ADHD is Adderall. Right, which I understand to be an amphetamine, right, a stimulant. Um, could caffeine be more effective than Adderall for people with ADHD?

Now, in this case, we have to consider that people with ADHD have severe attention deficits. There are reasons, many reasons, why, uh, they have attention gaps that other people don't have. They appear to have low dopamine signaling in the brain. And the idea here is to use these amphetamines to bring dopamine signaling up to normal so that these people can now focus on normal tasks again. However, of course, we are dealing with an addictive drug here, and this is of course not ideal. However, we have caffeine, and there's actually some very good research to suggest that medium caffeine intake, about 200-ish milligrams, can actually help people with ADHD, in particular children. There are many studies in children showing that if you drink a moderate amount of, or let them drink a moderate amount of caffeine, it helps them focus better. It helps them to pay attention better because of the effects on the dopamine system. And over time, if you do this long-term, there's also some animal data, it appears to rewire the attention circuits in the brain. So these children might potentially learn to focus and the brain circuits change towards normal levels. Levels of attention, towards normal levels of motivation, just because they're now able to do it. So in this case, caffeine is probably one of the better means to help these people with ADHD find their focus, quite literally. And if they find the focus, then of course they have an easier time to get into flow, because now all of a sudden they can focus on tasks again, they can enjoy tasks again more easily at least. Or in particular tasks they are less interested in because that's usually the problem for ADHD people. They can focus on things they enjoy but they cannot focus on anything else. So if you give them caffeine, you can help them do things again.

Nick and Michael, one of the things both of you have pointed to is experimentation with dosage. Do you have recommendations about how someone should go about really optimizing the amount of caffeine that they're consuming in a day and at what point of the day.

Yeah. And again, tell us about your protocol.

Coming to the protocol. Now, I will have to say that there's experimentation required. You have to experiment for yourself because caffeine half-life time in the blood is different from people to people. Some people metabolize caffeine faster, some slower. It can be between 3 to 8 hours, sometimes even 10 hours of a difference in how long the caffeine stays in your system. And then we have adenosine receptor polymorphisms, so different variants, uh, different variants of these adenosine receptors. Some people react differently to caffeine. Some people become anxious very quickly if they drink caffeine. Other people are fine. Another thing to consider is that if you drink caffeine regularly, you're less likely to have side effects from it. Whereas if you drink caffeine the first time, you might go crazy. So there are these tolerance effects. So if you drink caffeine regularly, it's easy for you to tolerate the negative effects. But most people drink caffeine anyways, so I will— let me talk about how to use it properly because this is rarely discussed, not even in, uh, podcasts. And that's how do you use caffeine properly? And what you need to know is that caffeine has all of these amazing effects, but they partly desensitize. And what I say about desensitize is specifically the dopamine D1 receptors. So again, we have these two dopamine receptors and the adenosine receptors besides them that block them. Caffeine improves signaling across both— improves the D1 receptors, the signaling across them causes more pleasure. It improves signaling across the D2 dopamine receptors, which causes more motivation, less effort aversion. And it turns out that if you drink caffeine regularly, the D1 receptor effects are lost, so the effects on pleasure go away. And that's because the adenosine receptors that block the dopamine D1 receptors, they increase in numbers. So if you drink caffeine regularly, you have more of these adenosine A1 receptors, you have more and more and more and more, and you still drink the same, say, 200 milligrams of caffeine. At some point, there's so many adenosine A1 receptors that all of the caffeine is bound off and you lose the effect on dopamine D1 receptors. And what it means is that you lose the pleasure effects of caffeine. Funny enough, you still have the motivation effects. And I think this is what many people don't understand. There's a lot of anti-caffeine movements out there. You have probably seen some. I cut caffeine out, I feel so much better. And I think it's quite clear that caffeine is probably— drinking caffeine is better than cutting it out. Probably it's good for your brain. And just drinking the same amount of caffeine every day increases your motivation because the effects on the D2 receptors of motivation, they last. So someone who drinks caffeine at the same amount every single day has better motivation than someone who doesn't drink it. So just biologically, this is true. But the D1 receptors, the pleasure effects of caffeine go away. And that's why we need to think about how do we keep those effects. We want to drink caffeine, we want to feel amazing, energized, energetic arousal. We want to have the positive effect. So how do we get this? And the solution is to drink more caffeine than you did the day before. If you drink 200 mg of caffeine today, you have to drink 250 mg tomorrow. Then you preserve these effects. As simple as it is. However, there's a problem because at some point we arrive at 1,000+ mg of caffeine. Obviously, and this might be too much, then it causes anxiety again. So we have to have desensitization phases. We have to have phases where I drink less caffeine. And the way I tested this is first I checked what is the minimum effective dose for me to see a decent effect, how much caffeine do I need to increase by every single day to keep the effect, and then finally, how much caffeine can I tolerate at most and when do I need to cut back? And how do I cut back?

Those are 3 things that you tested.

So all of these things I tested. Yes. So, and I kept these variables as consistent as possible, meaning that I always took caffeine on an empty stomach to make sure that it's not interfering with anything else. So I'm fasted in the morning anyways. I don't eat breakfast. I just drink my caffeine coffee, and I always use the same type of coffee. I use instant coffee. The powder, because 1 tablespoon of it is approximately 100 milligrams of caffeine. So the way I do it is 1 spoon, 1.5 spoons, 2 spoons. That way you can easily ramp up the amount of caffeine you get. And for me, I found the minimum effective dose about 200 milligrams or 2 flat tablespoons of caffeine. That's usually the— that's where I start. And that's also what the research suggests you need, uh, if you want to have the HRV increases, if you want to have cognitive improvement. In fact, for, if you're interested in physical improvement, you can actually take in more caffeine than that. To give you a quick idea, cognitive performance, anywhere between 40 milligrams to 300 milligrams, you see an improvement. Physical performance, you need 200 to 500 milligrams, so almost twice as much. So That is something you need to test depending on what task you do. But I start with 2 spoons of caffeine a day Monday. Tuesday, I take 2.5 spoons of caffeine. Wednesday, I take 3 spoons of caffeine, and so on. And usually by Friday, I'm arriving at 4 spoons. And once you get to a certain number of caffeine, you will notice that it causes more and more anxiety. So it hypes you up. The further you go with the dose, the more hyped up you will be, and you need to find your personal limit. That means how far can you go with the caffeine until you have trouble sleeping. And I had this, for example, it can be as little as 3 spoons of caffeine, 300 milligrams. If I don't eat dinner, if I don't do any strength training, these 2 things help me sleep. If I don't do these 2 things, I cannot handle much caffeine. I can handle 300 milligrams But my secret sauce is strength training. If I want to sleep, I just do a workout in the gym, heavy one, deadlifts, squats. It helps me fall asleep, removes the caffeine in the brain. I'm good. Anyways, this is just variables that you need to adjust for yourself. Start with a caffeine dose that works, 200mg, increase by about 50 to 100 per day depending on how far you want to go. At the end of the week, say 400mg on Friday, you want to cut back again. So ideally, you go back to below the first dose you took. So the first dose I took in this example was 200 milligrams. So I would go down to 100 maybe. You could cut it out completely, but then you will feel the side effects, which are unpleasant. I found that it's enough to just reduce the dose, go down to 100. Then you have one day where you feel okay-ish, not amazing, but okay. and then the next day, Monday, you can keep scaling up again. Increase, start the Monday with 200 milligrams, 250, 300, and so on. They can start scaling again, and I found that this is enough. Now, if you look at papers, they say withdrawal of caffeine for 3 days. That's quite a lot. I don't think you'd need to do this. 1 day of caffeine withdrawal is enough. You can take it out completely. You can drink a small dose. Or you can try decaf caffeine, caffeine or coffee that has no caffeine in it. That also appears to help to reduce the side effects of caffeine withdrawal according to some studies. But the important is that you do the withdrawal. You have to have one day, and it's usually a rest day probably. If you do this on a Saturday or Sunday, just have an easy day and then drink less caffeine, you will probably relax on the weekend anyways, and then you get back in action Monday to Friday, or even Saturday if you want to. So this is a scaling protocol that I've been using for the last years actually, and it works quite well.

And what I'm hearing is, is there really any need for like longer caffeine fasts, like a week or, or more? And, and then I want you to go back to that point about there's a lot of movements out there and people write articles about, I got off caffeine and I feel great. And that's again, going back to the neurobiology because they're the dopamine D1 receptors, which have to do with reward. Go back to that point, if you would, just to elaborate on that. Why is that not true that, you know, people going off caffeine and they feel great? And then, yeah, like, it relates to this idea of caffeine fasting.

Now, this is, of course, very popular. I think it's the same thing with the NoFap movement, which is stupid in my opinion. It's the same thing. You remove a dopamine source in your brain, and all of a sudden, you're Superman. I think this is the idea that people want to sell. I'm not convinced, though, because firstly, if you withdraw caffeine, you you will probably have a while, a few days where you don't feel well, and eventually you will accustom to it. You will have normal circuits again. But then my question is, how do people use caffeine? And I think what people actually do is use caffeine to counter sleep withdrawal because that's what most people do. And then of course you get the crash that Ryan has mentioned earlier. So people are using caffeine as an excuse to not sleep. I think this is the bigger problem because again, caffeine has neuroprotective effects. It has effects on motivation, pleasure, and if you use it well and you manage your recovery well, I don't see a reason why you should cut it out. So again, it depends really on your protocol. In my case, I drink caffeine in the morning, I fast all day, and I'm energized all day. I have no problems with energy whatsoever. But it's also because I'm, again, I'm used to intermittent fasting. I don't eat all day. I usually eat when I get back home. Work all day, have my caffeine, and I'm energized and fit all day. So I think it's more like to other lifestyle factors that people have. For example, they eat a carbohydrate-rich meal in the middle of the day that might make them sleepy. Such things. I think it's more the lifestyle factors that are the problem. And people are trying to compensate with caffeine for it. Because what happens if you withdraw caffeine? You get tired, you go to sleep, and then all of a sudden you don't have the lag that you would usually have and you feel better. And then people think it's because they withdrew caffeine, but what they actually did was just sleep more. I think there's some other confounding factors that we have to consider as well.

Nick, I want to ask another question real quick. So the idea of caffeine in the morning and coffee in the morning, And going back to your point about some of the protocols from FRC training is getting your— doing your hardest thing in the morning, getting your, your best flow in the morning after waking up. There has been some research that has shown that it's more appropriate or it's more optimal to wait like 60 to 90 minutes after you wake up for caffeine. But then I don't know if you're aware, but I think I just read a some research that contradicted that with caffeine, that it, and this is largely dependent upon your own profile, like, you know, genetic profile, that it's not so necessary to, you know, it's fine if to just, you wake up, take your, take your coffee and get into flow and that, that works and that's fine. So can you speak to that a little bit?

Now personally, I think I, I think I drink my coffee about 45 minutes after I wake up. I don't do any specific waiting times for this. Probably, I just do it after I brush my teeth. It's basically after I have some other things done in the morning, 45 minutes probably. I don't have any problems with it, but I also have to say that I usually couple it with cold showers. So I usually get my coffee and then I have the cold shower. So we have the dopamine release from the cold shower plus the caffeine, which is massive boost. This is normal, a normal routine for me, but this definitely makes a difference. So also for the listeners, if you want to have an even better effect, definitely pair the coffee with the cold shower because the coffee increases the availability of the dopamine receptors. Then you have the cold shower or cold exposure that gets you pumped up for some additional dopamine. It also helps you actually increase your anxiety tolerance a bit. Because what happens is, again, if it's cold, you feel anxiety. And I noticed that cold showers are harder when it's winter because the water here in the UK, it can be close to 0 degrees. And if you then do a cold shower, it's much harder. And I remember having, I had a few moments when I had anxiety attacks quite literally because I paired all of this fasting, caffeine, cold shower, but it makes you more resilient. And again, once the cold shower is over, you get the energy boost and you're more, you're also accustomed to the feeling of anxiety, which helps you a lot also in being more effective. If you can tolerate more caffeine, if you can tolerate the anxiety caffeine brings, you will perform better because you can use higher doses of caffeine. This is also something that's rarely discussed, but you can actually train anxiety tolerance also, and this will be very useful for flow, of course.

Especially the struggle phase of the flow cycle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love the idea of pairing caffeine, and I do that too with cold plunges. I'm in Miami, so we don't really have cold showers, so I have to do a cold— I have to find a cold plunge somewhere because I live in an apartment and I can't get one. So I do do that on mostly on weekends is comparing that caffeine with with cold plunge, and it is an amazing opportunity to just drop into flow so quickly with my primary flow activities.

So yeah, it's amazing. I have found— I found some similar effects of jumping into a cold river here at home.

So you have to call it a river, that's good. Yeah, you don't need to call it tub.

Yeah, that's right.

That's the best. And you're in nature, so it's Oh yeah, you get the serotonin as well. You get the serotonin, you get the dopamine receptor, you got the dopamine from the cold shower, and then the serotonin. It's perfect combination, perfect cocktail.

Amazing. Well, Dr. Reich, Dr. Menino, this is so much, so much fun today. Uh, thank you both for really just jumping on board with us and breaking down you know, how caffeine can number one be neuroprotective, how it can protect our brains, and how it can help us drop into flow states more consistently. I just found this, this conversation to be incredibly fascinating. I will rewatch it again and again. And Nicholas, I think I'm going to give your protocol a little experimentation this summer. with increasing dosage throughout the week and just kind of cycling back around.

It's actually quite fun. And I have to say that it's usually better the further you go. I like to be on the edge, so I like the days when I have more caffeine.

Actually, I, I was gonna ask you, do you have, do you prefer, is there any day of the week that you prefer?

Usually those who have a bit higher caffeine, it's actually all fine. Uh, also the lower caffeine dose is completely fine. I just like the feeling of being really energized, and you usually get this with the slightly higher caffeine. For me, it's about 3 tablespoons, about 300 milligrams. That's when the energy really kicks in. But it's also when I sometimes have trouble sleeping. So I really need to make sure I get my workout in on those days, and I eat a lot of carbohydrates in the evening that I fall asleep. But, yeah, that feels the best though.

Nice. Nice.

Yeah. Likewise, I'm looking forward to giving that protocol a shot too.

Awesome. Well, great.

Thank you. Thanks. Thank you, Dr. Lyke. Thanks, Ryan.

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