Exact number of cups of coffee it would take to kill you
Everything needs to be done in moderation, and we don't just mean having a balanced diet and staying off cigarettes and alcohol. Too much of anything can be bad for you, which includes too much exercise, as you put excessive strain on your heart and put yourself at risk of complications as you get older.
There's plenty of conflicting health advice out there when it comes to our vices, meaning one so-called expert saying the odd glass of red wine is 'good' for you will undoubtedly be in conflict with another's warning you to steer clear completely.
We're pretty sure that won't stop most of you kicking back after a long day of work with a glass of wine in the bath, nor would we decry you for indulging in a big slice of Bruce Bogtrotter-inspired chocolate cake on your birthday.
Similarly, there's a lot of information out there about caffeine, coffee, and the various pros and cons. We don't mean those milky extra grande Pumpkin-spiced frappelattes that are full of sugar and E numbers, but the pure stuff. Coffee has been linked to lowering the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and even some cancers, as well as its antioxidants helping boost your metabolism and may improve cognitive function.
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Even biohacker Bryan Johson has promoted coffee as a way to increase your lifespan, although there are obvious warnings and plenty of harrowing simulations about why we need to be careful with coffee. It is possible to consume a lethal dose, with a video from AsapSCIENCE explaining how coffee could be an unexpected killer.
The video starts by telling us how we're reminded to avoid poisons like mercury, with a 200mg dose being able to kill us, but what about seemingly innocuous things we regularly put in our bodies?
It would apparently take a shockingly low amount of cups of coffee to kill you, with 70 cups supposedly being lethal enough to take out a 70kg adult. The video tells us: "This amount of caffeine can trigger heart palpitations or even cardiac arrest."
Like with most of these things, it would be almost impossible to consume this much coffee. Is anyone really eating the 400 bananas or eight tubes of toothpaste required to kill you? Most people's coffee consumption is perfectly within the safe zone.
Much like we're told not to go munching on silica gel packets, we're told to simply keep an eye on our coffee intake.
There are a lot of varying reports out there, with a 2011 article from the New York Times claiming a fatal dose would be between five and 10 grams. Crunching the numbers, and assuming that caffeine content is high and lethality low, an eight-ounce cup of brewed coffee containing between 60 and 120 milligrams of caffeine means 42 would be the deadly number.
Elsewhere, 2018 guidelines from the FDA put caffeine toxicity levels much higher at between 10 and 14 grams. Elsewhere, the FDA site says effects like seizures can be triggered by the rapid consumption of just "1,200 milligrams of caffeine, or less than 1/2 teaspoon of pure caffeine."
Speaking to UVA Health, the Blue Ridge Poison Center's Christopher Holstege reiterated: "You would have to drink a lot of coffee to overdose on caffeine. The highest reported caffeine blood level following a survivor of a caffeine overdose was equivalent to 1,000 cups of coffee, for instance.”
More generally, the FDA suggests that two to three 12-fluid-ounce cups a day won't lead to any negative effects.
In terms of a lethal dose of coffee, it would be almost impossible to drink enough cups in one sitting to reach that level. If anything, you'd be sick long before. There are altogether different concerns about energy drinks, supplements, and powdered caffeine, with an increasing number of deaths linked to them.
The problem is, caffeine toxicity varies from person to person due to different tolerances. Even though that extra cup of coffee at your desk after a sleepless night probably won't do much harm, we wouldn't go around actively trying to gulp down gallons of the brown stuff.