Talk:Health effects of caffeine

Reviewing (or not)

I would have been prepared to review this article for GA candidacy but I fear I would have been distracted by its heavy reliance on news reports and primary sources. There are a lot of contradictory primary sources, and the only way to make content reliable would be a secondary source that addresses these contradications (e.g. with regards to diabetes). Can I direct the reader to WP:MEDRS, which we apply to clinical articles but probably applies to this article also. JFW | T@lk 11:49, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Health effects of caffeine/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: --Tea with toast (talk) 19:20, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Review

First of all, I would like to say that I appreciate the amount of work that has gone into this article. I notice that this is a recently made article that has some devoted editors that have helped shape it. While reading and reviewing, I learned much about the topic of the article, and I thank you for writing it. However, this article has several notable short comings which prevents me from passing it as a good article.

Minor points

I found several minor grammatical errors through out the text, and I took the liberty to do some copy editing. It should be noted that contraction ("it's", "can't", etc.) should not be used in formal writing (that is, in any wikipedia article).

• There are many unsourced statements. I have noted most of them with tags.
• In the introduction, I feel the following statement is misleading or not well written: "...it injects adrenaline into the system to give them a boost, and it manipulates dopamine production in a way that makes them feel good." Caffeine does not "inject" adrenaline, rather it can cause a release of epinephrine. Could you be more descriptive of what "feel good" means?
• The first sentence of the paragraph "Gastrointestinal distress" belongs under "cardiovascular effects"
• The section "Effects of genetics on withdrawal symptoms" has multiple problems making it hard to understand. I am confused by the abbreviations and whether you are referring to adenosine or adrenergic receptors. Please use proper formatting. You might want to ask for help from somebody at WP:WikiProject Biology or WP:WikiProject Medicine for tips on how to clarify the paragraph.
• I am surprised that the genetics section does not have any information about the genetic variation in the cytochrome p450 gene which causes people to metabolize caffeine differently.
• I am surprised that while the article has a section on "caffeine and alcohol", it seems to be out of date. There have been multiple recent news articles about the controversy of caffeinated alcoholic beverages being sold. I believe some drinks have been pulled off the market and there are investigations of safety and talk of such drinks being banned. I believe there are also reports that caffeine can make one feel "less drunk" and therefore cause a person to drink more. I feel there should be at least one sentence mentioning such things.

Major points

• I find that this article lacks many important points that are included in the Caffeine article. This article does not need to duplicate the text found in the main article, but I was expecting that this article would expand on the information found in the main article. Points from that article that should be at least noted in this article:
  • The possible effects of caffeine to cause an increase in miscarriage.
  • Drug interactions of caffeine with other drugs. The Caffeine article mentions paracetamol and fluvoxamine, and there may be others.
  • Mechanisms of ingestion/absorptions. The main article mentions that it can be absorbed through the skin and inhaled.
• The most worrying aspect of this article is that I find evidence of it being biased towards promoting the positive effects. Several reasons:
  • The section "negative effects" does not contain all the negative effects mentioned in the article: the possibility that it may cause peptic ulcers and breast/ovarian cancers, that its addiction can cause withdrawal, that it can complicate type 2 diabetes, and other effects.
  • The inclusion to the sentence "In these studies, the greatest benefits were observed in those who drank coffee for a long period in their lifetime." is likely untrue. That sentence could only apply to epidemiological studies, and I doubt it applies to each and every one of the studies supporting the items in the "Positive effects".

For these reasons, I can not promote the article to GA status. However, I hope that you can apply some of my advice to help improve the article. Happy editing! --Tea with toast (talk) 22:07, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

What about caffeine and urinary bladder cancer???? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.132.61.165 (talk) 23:15, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Removed Image with Inaccurate Information

I've removed a diagram purporting to show some of the negative effects of caffeine. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Caffeine#Effects_When_Taken_in_Moderation for discussion, as the same (or highly similar) image was used in both cases. Blahdenoma (talk) 20:28, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Diaresis/ diuresis

I believe the use of the word "diaresis" was in error, as it has something to do with phonetics. "Diuresis" refers to increased urination, and I think that was what was intended, so I have changed it. If I am wrong, hopefully someone will catch it and change it back. 70.253.91.133 (talk) 03:16, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Incorrect citations

I know I should fix this myself, but I'm not going to have time to sort it out in the near future.

Many of the items in the positive and negative effects sections incorrectly cite Smith A 2002, "Effects of caffeine on human behavior". Other sources listed on this page do support those claims, but the Smith paper does not. —Triskaideka 23:31, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

MERGE WITH "CAFFEINE"

This page goes far beyond discussing health effects, for example extensive discussion of mechanisms of action. Will merge with "Caffeine" unless there are valid objections brought here to dissuade me. Regards. IiKkEe (talk) 13:21, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Agree in principle, but the merger will require extensive editing, as both articles are complex with overlapping information and references. I've assumed the main reason why they have been separate is for this reason which might justify reconsideration. --Zefr (talk) 16:25, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Article organization

Even illegal recreational drugs don't usually begin with a section on toxicity/intoxication. If you look at articles about heroin or cocaine, the toxicity sections are lower down. Is there a reason to place such a heavy emphasis on caffine toxicity? 66.57.50.6 (talk) 16:06, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Caffeine has a more standard layout and is the article you would have to use to make a true comparison. I think the plan is to eventually merge this article into "Caffeine" so I wouldn't spend too much effort worrying about this. Sizeofint (talk) 17:04, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm still slowly merging all the content in this article back into caffeine, since as of now it just represents an arbitrary an unnecessary page split. It was a WP:CFORK initially. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 19:48, 9 October 2015 (UTC)