Over the past few months I was increasingly having issues with anxiety and in some cases, full-blown panic attacks. These culminated to the point where I had to pull over while driving one day and get my wife to pick me up.

This obviously freaked me out, not just because of my feelings that day but the implications it had for my future life. I wrote about my symptoms [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskDocs/comments/sde8pv/i_29m_keep_having_sudden_lightheadedness_in/) seeking help, but no one responded.

I read a lot of posts on r/anxiety that referenced caffeine as a trigger. This was interesting, because I was consistently drinking highly caffeinated drinks around the time my anxiety increased. I decided to quit caffeine "cold turkey". I also ordered a blood pressure machine and two blood glucose monitors to track my vitals. 

After two weeks of being caffeine free I feel tremendously better, have virtual no anxiety, and 0 panic attacks. I'm shocked at how definitive my results are - almost certainly not a placebo response. At times I feel my brain trying to go into panic mode, but my heart / body doesn't escalate the situation like it used to, so I recover within a second.

Notes:

- It took about a week off caffeine for me to feel 100% better
- I did a one-day test where I consumed a large amount of caffeine to try to replicate the effects of my racing heart, dizziness, etc. but I didn't feel noticeably different. I suspect that one random day of high caffeine is not enough to trigger my symptoms. Rather, sustained consumption is what matters.
- I'm sleeping noticeably better since cutting out caffeine (unfortunately I don't have great data on this.) This does make me question whether caffeine itself is my underlying trigger, or if its lack of sleep caused by caffeine.
- My data on blood sugar and blood pressure didn't show anything unusual, but I started collecting data *after* my last panic attack, and *after* I cut out caffeine.

Here's the data I collected and corresponding [graphs](https://postimg.cc/Lnd635Kz).

|notes                                                                      | SYS| DIA| Pulse|irregular_heartbeat | blood_sugar_dario| blood_sugar_caretouch|dt                  |
|:--------------------------------------------------------------------------|---:|---:|-----:|:-------------------|-----------------:|---------------------:|:-------------------|
|Before eating or drinking; feel okay                                       | 113|  73|    70|FALSE               |                62|                    NA|2022-01-29 09:30:00 |
|Before eating, after drinking half of a small granita; feel slightly shaky | 125|  60|    64|FALSE               |                86|                    94|2022-01-29 12:15:00 |
|a few hours after dinner; feel okay                                        | 126|  69|    66|TRUE                |               102|                    99|2022-01-29 20:15:00 |
|hour after breakfast                                                       | 109|  61|    80|TRUE                |                88|                   111|2022-01-30 10:15:00 |
|hour after a snack; feel fine                                              | 114|  74|    70|TRUE                |                82|                    93|2022-01-30 21:15:00 |
|before breakfast                                                           | 107|  69|    63|FALSE               |                84|                    95|2022-01-31 09:00:00 |
|stressed                                                                   | 128|  91|    64|TRUE                |                NA|                    NA|2022-01-31 12:45:00 |
|few hours after dinner; took 40mg propranolol @ 3PM; feel good             | 104|  58|    57|TRUE                |                92|                   110|2022-01-31 21:00:00 |
|before breakfast; feel great                                               | 118|  73|    63|TRUE                |                91|                   109|2022-02-01 07:40:00 |
|before breakfast; slept bad; feel good                                     | 111|  66|    65|TRUE                |                92|                    96|2022-02-02 08:15:00 |
|before breakfast; slept good; feel good                                    | 103|  63|    68|TRUE                |                89|                   102|2022-02-03 08:15:00 |
|before breakfast; slept okay; feel good                                    | 112|  60|    68|FALSE               |                92|                   107|2022-02-05 09:15:00 |
|before lunch; slept okay; feel tired                                       | 115|  66|    64|TRUE                |                82|                    89|2022-02-06 12:00:00 |