If there’s one person I’m not going to trust when it comes to health, it’s someone who calls themselves a biohacker. I don’t need a blood boy or to nutrientmaxx on nootropics to have a healthy lifestyle. And in fact, most of these things are probably going to kill you. Case in point: a new trend amongst the biohacking crowd to reduce midday caffeine’s effect on sleep involves taking an experimental drug. But there is one drawback: taking it with little known drug Tylenol may actually kill you.
Here’s the thing. Biohackers are tired. You would be too if you had to wake up at 3:00am to cold plunge, get in a HIIT workout, sun your butthole, and record multiple podcast episodes before the market opens and you can start day-trading AI companies. If you’re going to stay on that grind until 8:00pm you’re going to need multiple hits of caffeine throughout the day. But you also have to sleepmaxx and that means getting to bed at 10:00pm sharp, so what are you to do? You turn to rutaecarpine.
As reported by Scientific American, many biohackers are using the supplement due to its ability to rapidly flush caffeine out of the body, thus mitigating the length of the effects. Rutaecarpine works by causing the liver to produce more of the enzyme CYP1A2, which breaks down caffeine. Thus the more CYP1A2 you have, the faster you can nullify caffeine’s effects.
The issue is that CYP1A2 is also responsible for turning acetaminophen, also known as Tylenol, and converting it to NAPQI, a toxic metabolic byproduct that could potentially damage the liver. Damage that would only occur otherwise through an overdose of acetaminophen.
There is currently no research on rutaecarpine’s effects when mixed with acetaminophen in humans, but a 2024 paper “that looked at mice and human cell cultures suggests that rutaecarpine could present a serious danger.”
But rutaecarpine use is not new. It is derived from the fruit of the tetradium ruticarpum and has been used for centuries in traditional Chinese medicine and Japanese Kampo to treat things like headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain. Though studies have linked the fruit to liver toxicity in animals.
Still rutaecarpine is sold online as a supplement, meaning it doesn’t require USFDA testing. It’s been picked up by biohackers and fitness influencers as both a caffeine reducer and a weight-loss promoter (due to caffeine’s appetite-suppressing qualities).
Non-biohacking options for a mid-day pick-me-up include half-caff, green tea, touching grass (vitamin D), half of a 5 Hour Energy, or even light exercise. Or you can over-engineer a solution to a problem that doesn’t need it. And all it may cost you is one teeny tiny liver.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
