Caffeine And Narcolepsy - My Journey As A Software Engineer

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all right I'm leaving the office a little bit later than I plan uh that's okay though know was a pretty hectic day um but I I think what was really cool is like being at the office and actually getting to work with people on solving problems so is actually pretty unique my phone was Auto still is auto playing YouTube I don't know why it does this it's not a cool not a cool phone feature to get connected to Bluetooth and then decide to start playing YouTube videos the YouTube app isn't even open so it like Auto opens the YouTube app to play it anyway um yeah so like completely uh kind of I guess like I would say it derailed my day in terms of what I had plan but at the same time uh being at the office was like the best thing for

this type of thing just because we got to put our heads together and work through some challenges so uh definitely enjoyed that um it's funny like I missed that kind of thing so even when they're difficult problems or like you're not sure like not sure like what the next step is and you're debugging things and whatever uh it's just cool to be able to work with people through that kind of stuff so uh yeah genuinely miss that kind of interaction versus I feel like a lot of a lot of stuff over the past few years has been less of that and more I don't know like definitely like obviously there's challenges and different projects and problem solving life site issues whatever you get the mix of things but I I do miss like sitting down in room and just like working through working through challenges

so um yeah it's uh it's a it's a fun thing it's it can be frustrating it can be challenging but I I think in the end like probably a lot of software Engineers enjoy that feeling of like look got a problem to solve we're stuck on it how the heck do we make it work right so yeah that was pretty good um but yeah it's a little later so it's like quter to 8 right now so it's a quite a long day uh that's okay though so um the good news is the drive home should be pretty pretty quick instead of saying 50 minutes it only says 30 minutes and uh we'll see I'll probably jump into the fast lane just in case but that's coming up okay so this morning on the drive-in I was talking about caffeine and I think that that's an

interesting topic um and I've I've kind of I've talked about this on live streams before actually so if you've watched some of my live streams you might be familiar with uh I don't want to say like my journey or like my story around caffeine and stuff but um I will share it because I think it's an interesting one I don't know um so I don't like I don't like uh coffee um I don't like I'm not wildly opposed to it but I don't it's not my thing um never really like acquired The Taste for it I think now if someone gave me a cup of coffee I'm not going to like say ew like get out of here like if it's a source of caffeine um I'll drink it I guess uh but I don't like I don't have like milk and sugar in my

coffee if I travel somewhere and I need caffeine like I'll have a black coffee and uh if I can I will I'll like I'll water it down or cool it down just so I can drink it fast to get caffeine like I don't drink it because I enjoy it I will drink it if I need caffeine so where am I going with this story so if we go back to my to my younger days um it actually kind of stems from from bodybuilding so for me uh going to the gym you know like six to seven days a week this is not not anymore actually at the beginning of this year I kind of dialed back going to the gym so I'm only going like maybe four times a week Max now um I'm just prioritizing different things in my life but especially earlier on

and going through University when I started looking into getting like pre-workout to go to the gym right like okay I want to go I want to have a good lift I want to make sure that I'm you know supplementing and doing whatever I can to you know to be better in the gym and have uh a better workout uh I realized like buying pre-workout is so expensive right uh if you do the math on it sometimes it's like a dollar $2 per workout just to just to be able to say I have caffeine I know like you're paying for these other things and the supplements but like the thing that really makes a difference is the caffeine like that's really all that matters and um I'll just say it outright like I don't really been working out for a long time and I've tried lots

of different supplements and I will tell you like creatine and you don't need that for like a pre-workout effect that has positive effects and caffeine everything else is basically just kind of like it's not that there's zero benefit but like man you're just kind of you're literally just wasting money when you don't really need to be um you know spend spend your money on like a better cut of meat or better vegetables or something I don't know like you don't need all this other stuff like caffeine is what makes your pre-workout your pre-workout so me being the way that I am I'm like I don't it doesn't make sense for me to be blowing money like that on pre-workout like that just doesn't make sense so I went looking and I started basic Al sourcing the ingredients for pre-workout and the one ingredient that I

really care about is caffeine so I found that I could buy caffeine powder in bulk and if you haven't gone looking for it it's like harder to get now but um caffeine is incredibly cheap it's it's absurdly cheap for like what you can get so I could buy and I have bought like pound bags of caffeine powder and if you consider that a serving is like say like 200 milligrams like a pound of caffeine will last you a very very long time a pound is like 452 or something um G right so multiply that by five and that's how many servings you have of 200 mg it's nuts so last a very long time so start my journey off I'm in University and I'm like okay for my pre-workout I now have a solution it's the cheapest thing I could possibly do for pre-workout cuz

I just have caffeine powder it's awesome and over time just started to be like a thing where it's like especially starting work right have my caffeine powder for my pre-workout and then it started to be like well I don't drink coffee in the morning so I'll have some caffeine and okay well now during the day like I just want to be sipping on something cuz I don't drink coffee at work I'd like some caffeine so it went from being like a 200 mg serving for the gym to 200 mg for the gym 200 Mig in the morning and then I might sip like another 200 Mig during the day but maybe maybe I'm going to sip 400 Mig during the day so it kind of get to this point where I'm up to like 800 Mig of caffeine in a day over the years that

I'm drinking it which is quite a bit but the problem doesn't like stop there because over time and we're talking over like a I don't know it's been 10 I'm trying to think cuz it's going back a few years now about eight about 8 years maybe 8 to 10 years of of doing this right where I'm having kind of building up how much caffeine I'm having in a day when I started dating uh my wife my girlfriend at the time when we started dating uh I realized like I would go you know uh drive to visit her and say stay there for the weekend and I would wake up on like a Saturday and I was like I don't think I can get out of bed like I'm exhausted and I would you know wake up for breakfast or something and then like after like

an hour or so I'm like I like I need to nap I'm dead tired and it was so weird because I'm like why like why do I feel like this in hindsight I think it's because like I wasn't driving to her house and bringing you know a supply of like 800 Mig of caffeine per day like I'm not bringing caffeine powder with me everywhere I'm going so um I started to realize like I got a problem like I'm I'm unable to stay awake effectively so I I didn't realize this at the time though right like I wasn't really equating it to caffeine so anyway fast forward a little bit we're living together we move out to um to Washington and I'm working remotely and still kind of doing my caffeine thing so this is over the past now now four years and I started to

realize like what was happening when I'm working remotely is I'm like man I'm getting tired during the day and I'm still having my my 800 migs of caffeine so like I'm going to I'm going to have to like nap over my lunch break so like eat really quick go have my my nap and get back to work I was doing this for you know not every day but like couple times a week and uh I one of the benefits of working from home just have my bed there it's great and then it started to be I need more than one nap so I'm having my 800 Mig of caffeine having a quick nap at lunch and then I might have to nap after work as well so now I'm having two naps a day some days and my 800 Mig of caffeine and I'm like

something's not right like I don't feel okay about this and I know from talking with my wife especially from like bodybuilding and weight fluctuation I was trying to put on a bunch of weight for just getting bigger for bodybuilding and I said you know what's got to be happening I must have sleep apnea cuz it would explain a lot so if you're not familiar with sleep apnea I'm not an expert by any means but um basically when you're having an apnea during your sleep you're you're basically like you're suffocating in briefly you're not getting oxygen in and that's not a good spot for a vehicle anyway okay um so it's not like you can have apnea episodes during the the night and it's actually like a common thing that happens but when you have sleep apnea you have to have over a certain number of

apneas uh per minute I guess or what whatever it is per hour I don't know what the measure is but you have a certain number of these events that occur and that affect like essentially affects your blood oxygen level during your sleep so when that happens you end up having bad quality sleep and then as a result you are tired the next day so sleep apnea is pretty scary because you can you can literally over time cause brain damage uh like literally so you know if if you're concerned that you might have sleep apnea you should go get checked out it's uh it's worth looking into but I was convinced I'm like I'm getting really tired I've been putting on weight what can happen is as you're getting heavier even even if it was 100% muscle which is not the case if it was even

like as your neck gets bigger just from being bigger overall it can make it literally harder for you to sleep comfortably and and breathe clearly so I'm I'm convinced that sleep apnea at this point and so I go for a sleep test I schedule a sleep test and they say no problem we'll uh we'll also do like a nap study which I thought was kind of funny so you know the next day if they need to you stay and you do these naps so I go for this the sleep test and um the next day they tell me they're like look you actually had like very few apneas your blood oxygen throughout the night was almost perfect like you don't got sleep apnea that's not what's going on here so okay interesting like not what I expected and they said what you know we did

talk about the nap study so we're going to keep you for the nap study say okay so basically lose a day of work but you know it's for medical reasons so let's figure this out so the nap study I think the way it worked was that I had to do five naps and try to do five naps and I should explain the room that you sleep in because might not be obvious if you've never done one of these but it's a pitch black room and there is no sound so you might say that sounds great but it's so dark it's so dark that it's almost scary because you can't see your hand in front of your face uh I've I've never been in a room that was so dark in my life like ABS absolutely fascinating how dark this room is um so when I

go to do my nap you know it's like 30 minutes after I woke up in the morning I'm like I'm not I woke up I'm not I'm not tired so we'll see how this goes so I li lie down for my nap they turn off the lights and stuff and it's pitch black and I just remember lying there and I'm like man I can't fall asleep and you you probably have done this before where you're like dreading the fact that you're not sleeping and you start to get anxious about not sleeping and I was like oh I'm screwing up this test like no good and then you know after a little bit they come back into the room turn on the lights and then they ask you questions so they go okay how long do you think it took you to fall asleep how long

do you think you slept for how many times do you think you woke up whatever you know just kind of surveying you they collect that information and you wait like 30 minutes and then they repeat the whole thing and you do this like five times so at the end of the day I remember we were reviewing things and uh and I was kind of saying like hey like I thought it you know here's what I thought it kind of was embarrassing I didn't go to sleep anyway so they're kind of laughing at that but um when we finally went over the results they said so for every time that I had to go down for a nap they said you did in fact go to sleep every single time which I thought was impossible cuz I thought I was awake the entire first nap and

they said in fact you fell asleep within uh 30 seconds to a minute for every single nap so not only did I sleep every time but I fell asleep almost instantly so they said for people that are sleep deprived usually what they see is that the first nap you take because you're sleep deprived your body is like okay we got to catch up on sleep and like we're going to we're going to crash for this and and get whatever sleep we can and they said usually people that are sleep deprived that happens and then every single other nap after that their body kind of got what it needed and then and that's it they said the fact that I napped every single time solid and fell asleep almost instantly they said that's not sleep deprivation that's narcolepsy so I was diagnosed with narcolepsy now they

didn't say there's any cause or anything or like you know I don't know like it's a disease or like it's genetic or anything like that there's no explanation for it just like this is what we observe so okay so not a whole lot of options and it's not I think I think some people hear narcolepsy and they they've seen things in like movies and media where they're like oh so you just fall asleep randomly so like me just driving here I would just pass out or something and like that's not the case that's not what narcolepsy is but um I think it's portrayed that way in in like movies and cartoons or whatever just cuz it's like more interesting I guess so I basically I can't remember the name of the of the the chem or the hormone whatever but the the thing that signals

to your body like whether or not you're tired and like that it's kind of like nothing's really inhibiting that effectively or it's over producing or something so that's kind of what I got to deal with so I go okay now I got to really try and correct what's going on here because if I have narcolepsy I need to figure out how to get like how do I get better sleep how do I not stay like tired all the time can't possibly be having more caffeine so sort of researching some things and I'm not a doctor right obviously um I'm just a dude in the car with a camera the lik to do software engineering and uh when I was watching some videos and reading about caffeine I heard something that was very interesting that kind of changed my perspective on things because I could have

200 Mig of caffeine and go lie down and go to bed bed like caffeine at 200 mg does not get me wired caffeine at 200 Mig just keeps me at Baseline which sounds kind of scary to say um so I was like I don't get it like it can't be caffeine but what I had read and watched about caffeine was suggesting that just because you fall asleep fast with caffeine like if caffeine's in your body doesn't mean that the quality of your sleep is there in fact having caffeine in your system while you sleep apparently not a doctor but apparently uh is going to give you a very poor quality of sleep so I said okay I got to do something about my caffeine intake got to start correcting this um and decided that I'm going to make changes for it so to start things off I wanted to plan to reduce my caffeine intake and I wanted to plan to eventually try to have my caffeine intake finished before 300 p.m.

and that way when I go to sleep at like 11:00 it's basically out of my system and that way I can have a good sleep so I decided that I was going to I can't remember why this came up but I took my caffeine scoop and I measured the amount of caffeine for my 200 mg caffeine scoop and I had a little bit of a surprise rise because my 200 mg caffeine scoop is actually 300 mg so I've been having 50% more caffeine for over a decade than I thought which means when I say that I was getting up to 800 Mig of caffeine uh more like at least 12200 mg of caffeine every day throughout the day including up until when I go to bed and did I mention for like over a decade so I went oh crap I'm pretty convinced and again

I'm not a doctor I'm not a scientist I quite literally have no idea what I'm talking about I'm just trying to rationalize my body and I said oh crap I think I think that I've kind of made self narcoleptic I don't even know if that's possible but I feel like I've created the symptoms for this so that really made me go okay Nick you got to start making changes so earlier this year I started trying to dial down my caffeine and the ways that I started doing this is I said I don't actually need caffeine for my workout I like it but I don't need it I certainly don't need it workouts for me I'm excited to go I'm happy to go I like to work hard I'm not going first thing in the morning when I'm asleep so like I can go lift weights

and be good so I'm going to stop having two cuz it was sometimes getting up to 400 Mig of caffeine for my workout so I'm going to stop that that's a big chunk out and I cut it out easy didn't care didn't notice it it just meant that my pre-workout was like I was just having water and some flavoring right maybe some amino acids or something whatever that one was easy but we still got a long way to go and because my workouts were in the evening that meant that I could cut out a source of caffeine at night which is good but over the next few months from that I had to start dialing down the caffeine and take more and more so I went from truly having like you know over a gram of caffeine every day throughout the day I'm now finally

down to like 400 mg of caffeine which is still you know a lot for some people but um I've genuinely noticed that now that I'm down to this amount like I don't have I don't feel like I need to take naps so I feel like it's made a tremendous Improvement for me um there are still days after like one on on for the whole day like I need a nap there's still days where I'm like you know maybe I didn't sleep while I need a nap but I don't need it for working out anymore um I think now I can confidently say like there's been days now where I prepare my caffeine to to take in for the day and sometimes like I've only had 300 mg before 3 and like I don't care like I I don't need to go chug the rest of

my my caffeine to make sure I can stay awake for the rest of the day so it I just wanted to kind of say this because it took literally months before I could get that better for myself so um yeah kind of kind of crazy uh now my sleep is still pretty screwed up like I I go I basically go into REM sleep like right away and this happens this has been happening for at least like eight years at least uh probably closer to 10 but so maybe this part's unrelated but when I go to sleep at night uh I close my eyes when I lie down in bed when I fall asleep I go into REM sleep immediately because I have extremely vivid dreams like vivid enough that I can locid dream and like basically walk around doing whatever I want in my dreams

like as soon as I fall asleep and what happens is you know I might sleep like that for 20 minutes 15 minutes or something and I wake up this happens every night by the way Wide Awake I feel wide awake and I'm like okay like you just did the thing where you had your vivid dreams go back to sleep unfortunately I fall asleep pretty quick the narcolepsy stuff so that's cool but I go from feeling wide awake to like okay Nick force yourself to sleep and I'm sure I fall asleep very quick so whatever um and then sometimes I'll have a couple episodes of that where I might have very vivid dreams and wake up a couple times but uh yeah my point is just like that's a if that pattern happens a lot that can really be disruptive for my sleep like I might

lose an hour of sleep in a night because I'm doing this like very Vivid dreaming type of thing now I'm sure I'm sure someone could say because I'm not a doctor I don't know they might say hey that um that Vivid REM sleep is actually fine you're still resting and recovering and that's totally cool but um so I don't know but I feel I personally feel like less rested when that happens so maybe it's the little episode in between where I wake up uh very uh wide awake so anyway caffeine is a caffeine's a hell of a drug but that's my that's been my caffeine Journey so yeah I'm finally down to 3 to 400 Mig in a day I feel better uh with regards to sleep more energy and I like I don't know like as you heard that like did that make makes

sense I feel like to me it checks out like again I'm not a doctor but if you're having a ton of caffeine and then it's affecting the quality of your sleep because apparently literally it does if it's in your system the next day you're going to need caffeine again because you're not sleeping well and you just keep doing this over and over and like I said it was like over a decade of doing it so to me makes logical sense I have no idea if that's actually the reality of how my body works but it makes sense to me so anyway I like caffeine I think it's good but I got to be careful about just having too much like I don't need to be having that much all the time so it's actually kind of nice because there's been a couple of times where

say like was really busy and doing something on a Friday I st to write my newsletter that goes out um there's been times where like I will take caffeine late and I'm making a conscious decision where I'm like look either bad planning or unfortunate circumstances I need to stay up to do this newsletter and I'll have caffeine at 9 10:00 at night like 200 Mig and now it's cool because it actually works instead of just being like a zombie still I take it and I go there we go like that'll keep me up um so I can use it opportunistically which is nice whereas for a long time it was just like it keep putting more caffeine in me and it's just keeping me awake basically so I'm definitely I'm definitely happy with the caffeine journey and kind of moving away from being so dependent

on it but um you know I don't think it's ever going to be I'm never going to stop having caffeine I think I think it's helpful I just have to do it carefully someone's coming behind me get out of here man okay now I got to my whole parking job is messed up got to do a three-point turn to get in my own driveway cuz what happens is like if I pull onto this road sometimes uh if people pull up right behind me there's just not enough time to I have to like I can't even explain it it's too difficult I don't have the words but um I'm basically positioning where I have to turn left to back in first so I pull left and then back in after I mean and uh that pulling left people are like what the hell is this person

doing so that's what just happened anyway caffeine do recommend just not a lot of it take care