While the average coffee drinker may consume several 8 oz servings of coffee per day, it only takes two servings of this size to contain more than 250 mg of caffeine, the amount doctors would refer to as a large “drug dose”. While you may have lived this long thinking your morning “pick me up” is your best friend, coffee is actually an alkaloid. This puts it in the same group of chemicals as cocaine, morphine and strychnine!
1. Coffee Puts Stress on the Heart
Drinking coffee rapidly raises your blood pressure and heart rate. The process of roasting the coffee beans turns the natural coffee oils into dangerous trans fats, which raise your bad cholesterol and lower your good cholesterol.
2. Coffee Contains Excessive Amounts of Pesticides
Coffee growers shower their plants with a host of pesticides, including Aldrin, dieldrin, chlordane and heptachlor.
3. Coffee Affects Colon Health
When you supplement your daily diet with coffee you are likely affecting your digestion and colon health. After you drink coffee and send your nervous system into a sympathetic or “fight or flight” response, your digestion stops. This means that whatever food that had yet to pass completely through the digestion process is left rotting in your intestinal tract instead of offering you nourishment.
4. Coffee Causes Fatigue, Headache and Other Symptoms
Whenever the sympathetic nervous system is aroused in a prolonged or chronic way as it is with habitual coffee use, the body is depleted of B vitamins. When B1, or Thiamin is depleted, people experience a variety of symptoms including fatigue, headaches and general malaise. These are often the same symptoms that send people rushing back to their neighborhood coffee shop day after day.
5. Coffee Raises Blood Sugar
When it stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system response, coffee also raises blood sugar. Your system is then flooded with insulin to counteract these dangerously high blood sugar levels. When this happens day after day as it does with most coffee drinkers, it severely damages the glands and organs.
6. Coffee is Very Acidic
Acidic foods and drinks lower the amounts of beneficial bacteria in your intestinal tract. This leads to a number of problems like acne, frequent colds and flu, constipation, diarrhea, colitis, irritable bowel syndrome and even fibromyalgia.
7. Coffee is Dangerous for Women
Studies show coffee raises estrogen levels in women. These increased levels of estrogen or estrogen dominance, leaves women at an increased risk of developing breast cancer, ovarian cancer, endometriosis, fibroid tumors, heavy periods, migraine headaches and PMS, among other things.
Once you decide you want to quit drinking coffee be forewarned that quitting “cold turkey” could cause painful symptoms such as headaches, depression and fatigue. When quitting, you should gradually decrease your intake of coffee and substitute the ritual with another healthy beverage or activity. Taking a good multivitamin and drinking plenty of water are also essential if undergoing the quitting process.
References:
Linda Berry, D.C., C.C.N.”Internal Cleansing”; Prima Publishing, Roseville, California: 2000; 66-68
PMS Relief.org; Coffee and PMS