We’ve all joked about “hook me up to a coffee IV and save me a couple extra steps; I’m exhausted this morning”, words to thaf effect.
But what would happen if you actually hooked someone up to a coffee intravenous drip? I assume it would kill you, even at a decent temperature, but how exactly would it harm you?
I suspect it might depend on how sweet you like your coffee. If you take it black, the solution would (possibly?) have less dissolved solute than your blood plasma, and some of the newly hypotonic solution would be drawn into your red blood cells by osmosis, eventually expanding them beyond what the cell membrane can contain and rupturing them: hemolysis. Would the volume of coffee that you infused be enough to do that? I haven’t a clue. Maybe some other Dopers can speak to that.
Also, how much sugar would need to be added to bring the coffee up to an isotonic (same osmotic properties as body fluid) state?
I’m not even going to guess at the effect of the caffeine when it goes straight into the bloodstream, rather than being absorbed through the GI tract.
You’d have to make sure the coffee is drip grind.
I’m having doubts the volume of coffee that you normally drink would be enough, if given via IV, to cause hemolysis, especially since there are other solutes in the mix. I have no idea how to calculate this.
But the thought of IV caffeine proved intriguing, and a bit of Googling shows that IV caffeine citrate is apparently a real thing. As far as I can tell, the only legitimate medical use is for premature infants who aren’t breathing consistently. However some studies seem to have examined IV caffeine in adults at doses that seem comparable to a cup of coffee (even allowing for the fact that caffeine citrate has about half the actual caffeine dose).
I would expect overdose to produce fast pulse, high blood pressure and irregular heartbeat, but I don’t know how much would constitute an overdose.
So maybe you’d survive your coffee IV? Can anyone else think of harm it might do? Infection? Other toxic effects?
It’s an IV, you won’t need sugar.
What about all the other substances that make up coffee? I’ve sometimes wondered how exactly the body removes introduced impurities from the bloodstream. I’ve seen at least one movie and recently on a TV show where coconut water was used as an emergency IV drip for fluid replacement. Apparently this is based in reality, because, I think, coconut water has a similar electrolytic profile as blood plasma. But coconut water, especially when tapped directly out of the coconut, as seen in one movie, must have a number of contaminants, as I imagine coffee does. We’ve all seen coffee grounds left in the cup from inadequately filtered coffee. What happens to any near-microscopic solid particulate?
The answer is probably ‘the kidneys filter it out’, but how well can the kidneys filter out solid particulate? Also I assume the kidneys evolved to filter only substances that naturally occur during metabolic processes, like urea.
What if it’s an Irish Cream Coffee?
I’d think that they would get caught in the capillaries, causing embolisms all over the body, but the ones in the lungs and brain would likely do the worst damage.
I would think there could be some sort of immune response to the presence of foreign materials in the bloodstream and this could complicate matters a lot
The video below describes what happened to a student who drank two gallons of coffee in a few hours. The results were very bad and life threatening due to caffeine poisoning. It is recommended that no one consumes more than 400mg of caffeine (4-cups of coffee) per day. And that is going through the digestive system. I can only assume that put directly into the blood stream lowers that amount (but IANADoctor). It did a number on his kidneys.
Whatever other problems might occur from putting coffee directly into the blood stream I suspect the caffeine hit will be very dangerous.
When my father had surgery on his large intestine, he was on IV fluids for a few days as he recovered. And he got really sick, and eventually his doctors realized he was suffering from caffeine withdrawal. And they gave him caffeine.
I’m not sure whether they let him drink coffee, or added it to his IV. But that seems like a legitimate medical use of the stuff.
It sure does. Did his condition improve with it?
Yes, he recovered normally from the surgery after that.
It would depend on the specifics. Dextrose is commonly given intravenously; caffeine is rarely given thusly but it’s not unheard of. Most of the coffee is heated water and that would be okay too. Lack of sterility and anything solid might cause problems of infection or emboli. But if it was filtered and fresh it might not cause too many problems. Not gonna try it.
So of course the answer to the OP is different if we are talking about a cup or so of gallons, and by method. Let’s stick with a cup or so. And avoid French Press and go with a a paper filter pour over or drip. The amount of hypotonic solution and caffeine in one cup given over a reasonable IV drip time period are not going to be of much more impact that if it was given by mouth. Assume sterile solution as well.
Now some figures and facts to base speculation off of.
Coffee filter pores are estimated at 10 to 20 microns.
Capillary diameter is about 10 microns.
Unknown - distribution of the size of particulates in coffee.
Path of a venous injection: to right side of heart then through lungs and the pulmonary capillary bed then to left side of heart and to rest of the body (brain and kidney inclusive).
So in terms of getting stuck in capillaries the limit is based on how many particles 10 microns of more might get past a filter with pore diameters estimated at 10 to 20 microns.
And the location would be in the lungs, which has a pretty big bed of capillaries
Smaller than 10 microns could get past the lungs and adhere to the walls of capillaries anywhere but the biggest bed for filtration on the next pass would be liver.
Would there be some immune reaction to those particles? Speculation but likely something but probably nothing the body cannot handle with normal immune response. And the total amount of these particles seem likely to be very small.
ahem
Still a bad idea, please don’t shoot coffee (with or without CoffeeMate.)
Isn’t there particulate matter in coffee?
Not good.
Filtered? Percolator? press? I suspect there’s very little particulate in filtered coffee.
I don’t know how well verified this story is (yes, Daily Mail):
Not sure why coffee with milk would be being given NG? So eyebrows raised let’s say.
But breast milk has accidentally been given IV in NICUs.
Not a common error to occur … The portion relevant to the hypothetical of this thread:
Best practice now includes having connectors for NG and IV that are incompatible with each other to prevent the possibility of such an error.
The big particles in breast milk are the fat globules. I think however homogenized milk does not have such big fat globules.
Paper filters filtering of the coffee oils is part of the taste difference between pour over and French Press methods.
The story doesn’t really make sense. Surely in order to conflate substance A with substance B, they not only need to be adjacent to each other, but also similar? Like, not in a coffee cup?