A Tale About Caffeine
This blog post is from the Nurse Kim archives of myth busting. I want to share some "alternative" or maybe just lesser known health and wellness viewpoints for you to chew on.
*These posts are not intended as official medical advice.
They ARE meant to be fun, informative, and thought provoking, hopefully sparking an interest for you to do your own research (you can start with the links I provide!) and discover the marvels of the human body, and how it can function at its optimal performance level if we understand how it works and interacts with our environment and our diet.
I have a passion for health and wellness through lifestyle and nutrition and have done thousands of hours of research in addition to being a registered nurse for 23 years. I have done A LOT of self-experimentation in and around diet, lifestyle, body care, and supplementation and have spent a lot of time looking into the science behind it all (or lack thereof!). Check back weekly for the latest post!
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I love coffee, we’ll start with that.
I love the smell, the
taste, the ritual, and the warmth (I don’t believe in cold coffee even in the
middle of summer, lol!).
I also am in the camp of believers that coffee carries actual
health benefits. In addition to the obvious energy and mental acuity boost that
most people know and love it for, it also may reduce your risk of Type II Diabetes,
protect against Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, decrease your risk of depression,
support liver and heart health, enhance athletic performance, and finally, could
even increase longevity. That is QUITE the list! It is also well known for
being one of the most powerful antioxidants in nature.
HOWEVER…
Something happened that made me give up coffee (or more so caffeine)
forever.
I quit coffee for 6 months last year just to see how I would
feel (ya’ll know how much I love a nutrition/dietary personal experiment) and also
to see if my wild energy was really me or if it was the coffee. I
have never been a huge coffee drinker. One cup in the morning and very occasionally
an afternoon pick me up.
Relevant side note before we continue:
I have had pretty
intense situational anxiety over the last 10 years or so. My fears/worries are in
and around accidents/injury. There is a lot more to that, but we will keep it simple
for the purpose of this post. One of my situational anxiety triggers was freeway
driving, whether I was driving or not. I would often cover my eyes when my husband
was driving and wince and jump constantly every time any little thing happened.
Super annoying to everyone, including myself. I could feel my heart rate
and blood pressure go off the charts and pretty much had to put the kibosh on any
long-distance travel in the car because I just couldn’t handle it.
I never in a million billion years would have thought any
of this was related to caffeine intake. I feel like it makes sense when you think
about it, but I also feel like anxiety related to caffeine intake is not something
broadly talked about, probably due to our general societal love for (and
dependance on) caffeine and the huge role it plays in our lives.
One day after about a week off coffee, I was driving down the
freeway on my way to the San Elijo campus to work (the driving of course
something I dreaded every time I had to go down there), and all of a sudden,
I realized I was in the middle lane, going 75 miles per hour. I know this does
not sound like anything significant to you all. But when I tell you I NEVER got
out of the slow lane and NEVER went over 60-65 miles per hour on the freeway, believe
me, I mean NEVER.
And here I was, acting like a “normal” person just driving along,
and weirder, I still noticed all the other little things that go on with
drivers on the freeway... this person changed lanes too close to a car, or that person
is weaving in and out of traffic, but NONE of it was giving me the stomach in
my throat, dizzying unease I had been experiencing for so long.
My anxiety had been turned off like a light switch.
It was SUCH A HUGE deviation from how I normally felt, I thought
it must be a fluke thing and didn’t understand what was happening. I told myself
it was probably just an odd moment, and I would be a nervous wreck on the ride home
per usual.
Well guess what.
I wasn’t.
I was calm, collected, and relaxed. WHAT THE!!??
And then I made the connection… it was because I was off caffeine. This was the change I had made, and these were the (totally unexpected)
results.
But alas, because I am slow on the uptake… after 6 blissful
anxiety free months, I read something about coffee being good for the thyroid (having
had thyroid labs that weren’t that great) and promptly started drinking coffee
again in hopes to kick start my thyroid and metabolism. I also succeeded in
kickstarting my situational anxiety right back on.
So, after another year (time flies when you’re having anxiety), I decided to stop messing with caffeine for good and have now been off for a little over a week and am happy to report, back to my calm, cool, collected, freeway driving self. By the way, although that is the example I am using here, it’s not just the freeway driving, there are other areas of my life this has had a huge and meaningful impact.
It’s such a remarkable difference I can’t even tell you. And
now I have done the experiment twice, so I know that’s what it is.
So… something to think about if you have anxiety perhaps?
And the break between semesters
when you are not bogged down with school might be a great time to try it out just to see.
I still enjoy my morning ritual with decaf which thankfully and
surprisingly comes with a lot of the same amazing health benefits as its evil caffeinated twin 😉 listed at the beginning of this post! Yay!!
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