anecdotally, i always struggled focusing with caffeine. look into green tea; it's not only very healthy but it's more of a calm and alert type of focused, no jitters or bursts of energy. 3-5 cups seem to work best for me.
My anecdotal contribution: Weaning myself completely off caffeine with a "descending dose" regiment of coffee to green tea to decaf tea to herbal tea has done wonders for my ability to focus.
I've been caffeine free for over 7 months and the health improvements make a good sized list:
• Better digestion due to the lack of caffeine induced peristalsis
• Insomnia completely gone
• No feeling "hung over" every morning prior to consuming caffeine
• No swings in energy level during the day except those traceable to hunger or physical fatigue
• Complete disappearance of mood swings, both hypo-manic and depressive
• Increased productivity due to a better ability to focus for long periods of time
The one complaint that I have is that my creativity has dramatically decreased during this same period. Gone are the racing thoughts and flights of invention that had me continually coming up with new ideas. Still working on a controlled, non-chemical way of getting back to that creative state...
Of course, YMMV, but if you suffer from depression or any form of bipolar or seasonal affective disorder I highly recommend getting off of everybody's favorite drug. It may be affecting your life far more than you realize.
I'm in a similar boat, though I used caffeine mints to gently ease down that slope, reducing by one mint a day. Worked great. In terms of creativity, taking time off from tech helps a lot, and the occasional cup of coffee does as well, with a much larger mind-boost because it's no longer regular for my body.
My highest dose was a large mug of dark roast made in a french press. One of these in the morning, one in the afternoon. I don't have any idea exactly how many milligrams of caffeine that was, but note that the darker the roast, the less caffeine there is.
So I don't think I was even actually consuming very much of the drug. Rather, I believe my body processes caffeine very slowly.
I also notice a much lower effect from green tea. I wonder if it's the different methods of preparation? Consequently I notice a much smaller effect from every single drink with caffeine when compared with plain coffee.
If you want to replicate this, please remember that they consumed only glucose!! Fructose, which is present in equal amounts in table sugar, sucrose, is definitely not good for you (unless you eat fibre with it, like in fruits). It's processed solely in the liver and in a way analogous to ethanol. You can get fatty liver from too much HFCS.
I'd be incredibly surprised if this was actually the first study that bothered to confirm it. Aren't the effects of caffeine pretty well documented scientifically?
I smell an easy study generator: take well-established results from single factors, combine them, and then see the relationship of the results (are they additive, multiplicative, completely at odds with one another, etc.).
Of course, one might first want to consider the depreciated effectiveness—relatively speaking—of the sugar, and of the caffeine, were they to combine all three.
