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A microscopic view of caffeine crystals and why the world’s favorite stimulant is anything but harmless to the physiology of those who consume it.
Take a close look at the picture above.
Does this look friendly to you? Think with your gut – literally.
Is this something that you think your body would welcome if you consumed it frequently and in large quantities?
Do you think this would be health-promoting in any way?
Caffeine is a Plant Pesticide
Even without knowing a single thing about caffeine, it is abundantly clear by simply looking at this astonishing electron micrograph of caffeine crystals that this substance is very likely a toxin to the body. These insidious crystals are found in varying quantities in the leaves, seeds, and even the fruit of some plants and guess for what purpose?
To stun, paralyze, and even kill insects that feed on the plant for food.
In short, caffeine is a natural pesticide. It is certainly not on the toxic magnitude, of say, Monsanto’s Roundup, but it is a pesticide just the same.
If insects are instinctively smart enough to avoid plants containing caffeine to ensure their own survival, don’t you think you probably should avoid it too?
Caffeine Increases Stomach Acid Levels
Let’s think about what happens when you consume caffeine.
Caffeine increases stomach acid production. While this is not necessarily a bad thing if you just ate, it can cause problems over time if excessive stomach acid becomes a constant feature of your personal biochemistry.
Acid reflux (GERD) is one symptom of imbalanced stomach acid levels and Prilosec, the over the counter medication for this condition is one of the most popular drugs stolen by organized retail crime (ORC) rings – indirect but telling evidence of the widespread nature of reflux problems today.
Could the reflux epidemic be associated with all those Starbucks and Red Bulls folks are consuming? Remember the gal who recently put herself in the ER by drinking too many 5 Hour Energy Shots?
The high demand and dependence on PPI drugs (proton pump inhibitors) like Prilosec or a 24-hour drug like Nexium do not come without a heavy price!
Undesired weight gain is one of the associative side effects of long term treatment with PPI drugs as reported and published in the peer-reviewed World Journal of Gastroenterology.
Once on the purple pill for reflux, always on the purple pill. The outlook is bleak and a ballooning backside is on the horizon unless you take charge and make some changes – losing the caffeine being Job #1.
Caffeine Whacks the Adrenals
Even folks who are seriously health-conscious seem to have trouble shaking the caffeine habit which never ceases to surprise me.
Those who eat low carb, keto or paleo seem to have a particularly difficult time managing caffeine intake perhaps because caffeine stimulates the liver to release sugar into the bloodstream, in essence, a way to get carbs without actually eating them!
Don’t forget about the 5 Hour Energy Shot junkie who ended up in the ER. Let the lesson ring clear. Her liver started to shut down from all that caffeine because she was drinking about 10 of those suckers per day for 2 weeks straight!
I know several people on a first name basis who are not far behind that insane level of caffeine consumption and I’m sure you do too. Just because it doesn’t put you in the ER doesn’t mean it’s not hurting you badly.
One thing’s for sure. If your diet is making you so tired that you need caffeine to indirectly boost your blood sugar and artificially stimulate your adrenals, you’ve got a problem and the diet you’re following is clearly not optimal for you. Time to do some tweaking my health-conscious friends!
C’mon. You know a big plate of sprouted waffles would be totally, rockin’ AWESOME.
There’s no doubt a plate of sprouted waffles – YES – even every single morning would be a more healthful habit than that coffee addiction. Don’t fool yourself and rob Peter to pay Paul.
Frequent stimulation of the adrenal glands from caffeine eventually leads to adrenal exhaustion whether this be at age 20 or age 60. If you’ve been drinking coffee for years and think you are “just fine thank you”, think again. Feeling bone tired and not being able to get off the couch to do much of anything could be just around the corner as hormonal problems can strike suddenly and seemingly out of the blue (just ask any menopausal woman). It is the sleeping giant you best not ignore.
Other symptoms of adrenal exhaustion include lack of physical endurance and stamina, weight gain, reduced ability to handle stress, impairment of calcium absorption, and depression of immunity.
Probably most worrisome is the blood sugar issues caffeine exacerbates as mentioned earlier. Caffeine stimulates the liver to release stored sugars into the bloodstream which then has an effect on the body’s overall ability to regulate blood sugar levels.
The hormonal system requires such a delicate balance that caffeine’s negative effect on the adrenals can’t help but create hormonal challenges in the body over time. Dr. Bruce Rind MD, a holistic endocrinologist notes that the health of the thyroid gland and the adrenal glands are inextricably linked. If one goes south, the other one probably will too.
So the next time you reach for that cup of joe, chocolate bar, espresso, or energy drink, think about the picture above with all the spikes and points and imagine what this plant pesticide is really doing to your insides.
Ouch!
Thank you so much for posting this! I’ve been trying to decide whether or not to consume caffeine for a few months now. I used to consume about 2 cups of coffee a day, and/or various teas for the rest of the day. Not to mention the large amount of dark chocolate I would eat. It wasn’t even that I wanted a caffeine fix (well… so I had thought at the time. Looking back now, though…), but that I really loved the taste of those drinks and foods, and thought they had wonderful health properties.
Since I started trying to follow a WAPD, I cut WAY back on all of those drinks. Not because of the caffeine, but because initially when I was trying to consume fermented foods with every meal, water kefir was my go-to as I wasn’t fond of fermented foods. Several months later, I eat a wide variety of fermented foods, and I was trying to decide whether or not to add back a few of my old favorite hot drinks. I think I’ve sort of known I need to stay away from caffeine, but up until now, I haven’t found anything to really convince me.
I now consume about two cups of coffee a week, with cream. (I used to drink coffee black.) I haven’t had tea in about two months and to be honest, I REALLY miss my tea, so I may start swapping a cup of coffee with a cup of tea. Herbal chai and other teas are really helping though. Chocolate is my next huge enemy. I LOVE chocolate. I guess it’s time to finally try carob. Really hoping it will be edible… lol
What a childish group of people. If you do not like what she has to say then do not come here. Just because a study or studies says something is “good for you” does not mean it is good for everyone for everything all the time. Caffeine does not serve everyone well. If you health problems, eliminate coffee and caffeine containing beverages for a few weeks. Ween yourself off. Let’s put our big boy and girl pants and act like adults.
> If insects are instinctively smart enough to avoid plants containing caffeine to ensure their own survival, don’t you think you probably should avoid it too?
Yes!! And, if insects are instinctively smart enough to eat dog poo to ensure their own survival, don’t you think you should probably eat it too?
I do drink green Matcha tea and I do raw cacao a few times a week. I put in shakes, hot cocoa drinks, etc. Is this damaging too?
I wouldn’t mind giving up the tea, but oh no..not the cacao..lol!
I do feel a slight buzz from the tea and the cacao, but the buzz from coffee feels like cocaine to me. BTW..to get the so called benefits of various diseases that coffee is supposed to help, you would need 4-6 cups per day. I would be walking on the celing with that much coffee!
The Misconception: Coffee stimulates you.
The Truth: You become addicted to caffeine quickly, and soon you are drinking coffee to cure withdrawal more than for stimulation.
Mmmm, a warm cup of coffee with delicious cream, topped with a frothy head.
You smell it brewing and feel cozy inside as you browse cakes and brownies, scones and biscotti.
You get some of it in you, and you feel alive again…
Coffee is awesome….
Except, of course, much of this is an illusion.
The truth is, once you’ve been drinking coffee for a while, the feeling you are getting after a cup isn’t the difference between the normal you and the super you, it’s the difference between the addict before and after a fix.
Ok, this is a very simplified explanation:
Caffeine is an adenosine antagonist. This means it prevents adenosine from doing its job.
Your brain is filled with keys which fit specific keyholes. Adenosine is one of those keys, but caffeine can fit in the same keyhole.
When caffeine gets in there, it keeps adenosine from getting in.
Adenosine does a lot of stuff all throughout your body, but the most noticeable job it has is to suppress your nervous system. With caffeine stuck in the keyhole, adenosine can’t calm you down. It can’t make you drowsy.
That crazy wired feeling you get when you drink a lot of coffee is what it feels like when your brain can’t turn itself off.
To compensate, your brain creates a ton of new receptor sites. The plan is to have more keyholes than false keys.
The result is you become very sensitive to adenosine, and without coffee you get overwhelmed by its effects.
After eight hours of sleep, you wake up with a head swimming with adenosine. You feel like **** until you get that black gold in you to clean out those receptor sites.
That perk you feel isn’t adding anything substantial to you – it’s bringing you back to just above zero.
In addition, coffee stimulates your adrenal glands and when the adrenaline runs dry, you feel like you’ve been running a marathon, which leads you to look for more coffee to get those glands pumping again.
After a few rides on the adrenal roller-coaster, you crash.
You might think all of this probably takes a while, but it takes about 7 days to become addicted to caffeine.
Once addicted, you need more and more coffee to get buzzed as your brain gets covered in receptor sites.
Coffee also releases dopamine, the feel-good chemical in the brain which is released when you have an orgasm, win the lottery and shoot heroin. A similar addiction cycle with dopamine leads to depression and fatigue when you aren’t hitting the beans.
Finally, caffeine takes about six hours to leave your system. So if you drink coffee six hours or less before going to bed, you won’t reach deep sleep as often. This means you wake up less rested, and need more coffee.
If you’ve been drinking coffee for a while, you aren’t getting nearly as much out of it as you did in the beginning. You are just curing an addiction.
The take home is that regular use of caffeine produces no benefit to alertness, energy, or function. Regular caffeine users are simply staving off caffeine withdrawal with every dose – using caffeine just to return them to their baseline. This makes caffeine a net negative for alertness, or neutral at best if use is regular enough to avoid any withdrawal.”
Mind you, this is not a dependency. You will experience withdrawal symptoms upon cessation, but not like with amphetamines and cocaine.
Coffee doesn’t seem to affect the dopaminergic structures related to reward, but before you breathe a sigh of relief, ask yourself how long you’ve been drinking it. Try and stop for two weeks and see how hard it is.
A cup or three will still give you pep, but as with all stimulants, over time you need more and more to reach that golden hum.
At the end of the day, despite the anti-oxidants and similar benefits, there are more negatives than positives when it comes to caffeine. Plus, you can get those benefits (the positives) through other means…
-Grant T.C.
Behavioral Scientist and Biochemist.
Interesting, the dependency thing due adenosine overload went away for me once I started supplementing iodine after 2 weeks.
I find that when people are truly searching to understand, they can find the right sources, especially in this information age.
Likewise, when people are confronted with an uncomfortable reality that jars an existing belief, they can turn around and find what they need to prove that they were right all along.
people look like a zombi,attacking DD every morning.
use to be a very small pretty coffee cups…