| Author | Message | ||
     LisaM |
I have a question about the alleged evils of coffee. I have NEVER been a coffee drinker, and can honestly count on one hand the number of cups of coffee I have had in my 32 years. Until recently that is. Recently I have actually been craving coffee. I use the term craving loosely, as I don't actually crave the taste and still find it to be a vile brew. That said, I gave in to the craving for coffee and have been sleeping MUCH better since drinking it. I have terrible insomnia which I partially attribute to exposure to computers. My main problem is that it takes forever to go to sleep, and then once someone wakes me, I can't go back to sleep despite feeling exhausted. Anyway, since I started drinking coffee three days ago, I have slept much better and been able to get back to sleep after being awakened. I had my first coffee on Sunday, and that night I slept over 12 hours and woke feeling refreshed for the first time in ages. So my question is, what is causing this effect, and is it necessarily a good thing? Any insight appreciated. Lisa | ||
| Ingrid |
Lisa, Your experience is probably not one easily replicated by anyone else. There are many reasons that coffee could be considered unsuitable as a beverage, but my mother used to say, "A Swede without coffee is a Swede without friends . . ." so you know how I grew up. Anyway, IF someone does drink coffee, do use organic coffee because coffee beans are harvested over a very long harvesting season so the plants are sprayed more than many other types of crops. Coffee is a bitter. Many people who eat on the run do not ingest many bitter foods so that caffeine and nicotine become their two main sources of alkaloids and certainly two of the worst, but how bad caffeine is depends a lot on the individual. The main characteristic of bitter foods is that their molecular structure is finer (smaller) than foods of other tastes, such as sweet or sour or pungent. This means that where there is a lot of congestion, bitter foods relieve some of the congestion. As a general statement, coffee is considered not very suitable as a beverage for people with air type constitutions (my questionnaire will be posted in a couple more days.) However, it is not bad, in moderation, for people of other constitutional types. I read a Norwegian study some years ago that suggested that those who drink 2-4 cups per day are healthier than those who drink none, but that was in Norway where I suspect coffee drinking is a ritual much like in Sweden. This said, according to Dr. Vasant Lad, a little cardamom added to coffee will lesses the harmful effects of caffeine. This is actually how my mother used to brew coffee and I still add a drop of essential oil from time to time. Insomnia is another question and usually what one needs to relieve this exhausting problem is something highly aromatic, a drop of essential oil on a hot wet wash cloth or a diffuser. | ||
| Bonny Walter |
I am a heavy coffee drinker, loving it my entire life having literally grown up drinking it. I am so tired of the hearing all of the evils, and so glad to see something about the cardamon addition - which I will immediately try. I have an existing low thyroid function after having half removed for a tumor, and even with the meds find that without the coffee it's really difficult to keep the day going (I work two jobs however and am also going to graduate school at night). I have long been interested in herbs and so just finding your posting on adrenals is extremely interesting because I suspect that the traditional doctors don't have a clue about what is really happening with me these days. I would love to wean myself for the thyroid meds because even though they tell me this shouldn't have happened I've gained weight and am now a good 35 pounds over my normal weight (I lose weight when I stop taking the meds but then the TSH shoots out the roof and the doctors freak out) - just the opposite should be happening with low thyroid. So, I'm so frustrated I don't know what to do. I'm doing Atkins and that seems to at least stabilize so that I'm no longer gaining, but I'm not losing still either. Well, sorry I've deviated from the coffee comment. Thank you for your site. It's really informative and fascinating. | ||
| Ingrid |
Bonny and others, There are topics within topics here. Because I work in a more metaphysical manner, I have a totally different understanding of endocrine function than most doctors. I see that the aura and chakras are intrinsic parts of our existence. They are immortal whereas the physical body has a limited experience. Nevertheless, the physical body is built in the design of the subtle components rather than vice versa. In other words, where the adrenals are concerned, you can say that danger causes the adrenals to respond. Nothing could be more certain: the status of the adrenals does not cause near miss traffic accidents; rather the near miss accident causes the sudden deluge of adrenal hormones into the blood stream. So, if we believe that the chakras came first and the endocrine glands after, then the evidence of a deficient thyroid gland would be Cretinism. Since no one on the net and posting to this board is a Cretin, we can be certain that no one reading this was born with a drastically underfunctioning thyroid gland. Therefore, if something goes wrong with it, we should look at other possibilities first. Given that the main symptom associated with low thyroid function at birth is impaired mental development, why are 99% of doctors using Thyroxin and similar prescriptions to stimulate metabolism. Thyroxin is not the right medication to use for weight loss or low energy, and in some countries, a doctor who prescribed it for such purposes would be risking loss of his license. This said, your particular situation is a little different. The medicine was prescribed following removal of part of the thyroid. Still, the question of low energy and weight gain has to be answered based on your use of the energy available to you. By your own account, you are working two jobs and going to school at night. This is a formula for adrenal burn out. More importantly, one can only organize this way if one believes in mind over matter. I.e., your mind appears to be of the opinion that your body can support this much effort. In my work with adrenals, I try to help people understand that from the perspective of the adrenals, the mind is delusional. Obviously, the mind is capable of vast overextension, but the body can't act on every idea so discrimination is invoked to allow people to prioritize and sequentialize so that you can live in a linear world when a vast amount of your energy is not actually linear. Personally, I think that trying to live in such high gear causes spatial dislocation so we are having relationship trouble on a grand scale: we are first of all out of touch with ourselves, including our limits. Secondly, we are out of touch with the realities of Nature. Thirdly, we are out of touch with each other. The healing process must relate to the deeper cause or it will be cosmetic and only address symptoms rather than syndromes. | ||
| Cathlyn McCullough |
Hi, Re: Coffee: I have been doing a lot of research since I am trying to get off of coffee, but it is difficult because of my chronic fatigue. One of the main problems with coffee is that it affects the pancreas and insulin and it makes it so that your metabolism "prefers" to digest carbohydrates (not protein) and it makes you crave carbohydrates. This would make it difficult to lose weight and get proper nutrition, I think. I have chronic fatigue, adrenal exhaustion, estrogen dominance and candida and have had it probably ever since junior high or earlier...the homones make the candida worse. I am now ready to take steps to correct it, but I don't want to do it too quickly or too heavily, as I need to work! I am currently reading all the stuff I printed out from this website to try to decide what to do. Normally after about a week of trying to go off of coffee and doing what I think are good things for myself, such as eating life-giving foods and excercizing, I feel great for about a week and then I become "sick" with hardly any energy...I have quit going to medical doctors as all they ever recommend is HRT and Antidepressants! and this after seeing me for about 5 min! any suggestions would be helpful. I am planning to take a week's vacation and would like to start some sort of cleansing routine at that time. Thank you for any help anyone can provide. | ||
| Ingrid |
Cathlyn, This is certainly an interesting post. For various reasons, I have at times stopped drinking coffee, only to realize that the abstinence does not contribute at all to my personal well being. According to Ayurveda, the people who need to be cautious in their use of coffee are the vata types. It is also suggested by some that adding a bit of cardamom to the coffee reduces the ill effects of caffeine. Some people love the taste of cardamom and others hate it. My mother always put cardamom in the coffee she brewed so I grew up drinking it this way (once a week as a child) and was surprised to learn years later that this was probably a wise way to prepare coffee. Then, I lived in Kona for many years and saw the way coffee grows, how it is harvested, and how much pesticide is used on conventionally grown crops. That's almost an anomaly right there. "Conventional" now means chemicals rather than natural! I do not drink coffee in most restaurants, but I get organic, equal exchange, coffee for use at home. It is important to me that the coffee is organic and that there is fair trade with the growers. You might try increasing your intake of something like bilberries to see if this normalizes your hormones. If it does, some of the systems of your body may go back into balance. I might also add that nothing supports health more than good water, but it is so difficult to find these days. | ||
| Bonny Walter |
Ingrid - Thank you for your insight and the advice you give to us all. I am now going along at a slower pace than my last posting but working on getting things into balance and have added cardamon to my coffee these days. Funding is unfortunately possibly going to force me to pick up the pace again a bit, but I am also working to balance chakras,etc.... before going at it too rapidly. LOVE your site - again thanks. | ||
| Ingrid |
Hum! Part of health involves honoring the body's limitations! |