Chris Kresser: Yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask Mark Newman about the instructions there. I think that’s intentional. With all the tests, you always have to ask what you’re testing for. If you want to get a sense of where the patient is at with their current approach, their current lifestyle and diet management, it could make sense to have them do their typical morning routine on that second half of the testing period to see where their cortisol levels are with that typical routine. That may be why there’s no instruction to avoid caffeine there, whereas if caffeine is taken later in the day or night, it could jack up cortisol in a way during the evening, whereas it might not have as big of a relative effect in the morning. But that is a question that I’ve been wondering about with Mark.
And then that’s a great point, Thurston, whether people can get a false reading from a caffeine withdrawal effect. I don’t know. It’s a really good question. Certainly we see symptomatically that withdrawal can occur, especially if someone is drinking a lot of caffeine and then they don’t drink it the next day, but let me check with Mark and get back to you.