Too much Caffeine!

I tend to think that I have a pretty high tolerance for caffeine and it's effects. I can drink a few cups of coffee or a couple shots of espresso right before bed and sleep soundly with no ill effects. Also, even though I tend to drink probably around 3-5 cups of coffee/shots of espresso a day if I have to do without for a few days most of the time I do not get withdrawal symptoms or at least none that I correlate to my lack of caffeine. However, there is one symptom that I do tend to get when I have had too much caffeine, nausa.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d8/Caffeine.svg/306px-Caffeine.svg.png" align="absbottom" width="306" height="240" />

I do not normally drink too much as a few shots or cups of coffee spread throughout the day do not really have an impact. However, there was one place in Portland that I would go to breakfast sometimes that more often then not I would come back with nausa from drinking too much caffeine. This little diner joint in downtown called By-Ways, they served delicious yet super strong coffee and the servers always kept your mug full and before I would even think about 5 cups of coffee would've gone down and it would be bad news from there.

So it was with great surprise today when I ended up with that familar feeling of nausa from too much caffeine. I had just gotten some new coffee yesterday and started making a few shots of espresso with it this afternoon. I pulled three shots over as many hours, and while I had an americano in the morning it had been enough time that I did not really think about my morning intake. To be honest I do not think normally this would've caused a big problem but it was the robusta...

The 100% robusta did me in this afternoon and I am convinced of it. Using the highly reputable source of wikipedia, robusta tends to have about 50% more caffeine than the arabica beans we most commonly drink. That means the shots I had this afternoon were much closer to being 5 shots of espresso as oppose to three. This is going to have to be something that I am more careful with going forward and something for anyone taking into account if you notice you are drinking robusta.

So if you have any side effects of a little too much caffeine from a bit of shakes or not being able to sleep be warned!