Last Updated on July 17, 2020
Most of us cannot function without our daily dose of coffee. We may have a vague suspicion that the daily fix may ran havoc to our health- and our instincts are right.
If you suffer from the following symptoms and is an active coffee/ tea drinker, perhaps you may want to go about to gradually wean off the amount you are taking every day:
1. Pain/ Discomfort feeling on the kidneys
Coffee taxes the kidneys- it causes our kidneys to have to work harder to filter out the caffeine. That explains why after drinking coffee, your urine smell of coffee- your body needs to remove it. A Thai healer told me that he had to wean off coffee because he knew it is bad for his body.
As for tea, it is “yin” or cooling in nature. Too cooling also no good for the kidneys and would weaken it and the bladder.
2. Always have to pee- sometimes wake up with painful feeling of the kidneys that is only relieved after peeing.
So the more coffee and tea you drink, the more often you need to pee. Try to reduce it to half a cup of diluted coffee and you find you need to visit the toilet much lesser. Too much of all this taxes the bladder and weakens it as well.
3. Joint and body stiffness
If you have arthritis and is an avid coffee/ tea drinker, do your best to cut down or eliminate it, if possible. It stiffens the meridian points, veins and joints, blocking their suppleness. I was told by a Chinese practitioner that prolonged intake of tea especially drains out the cartilage fluids and joints- especially in women (as we are already hormonally more prone to bone mass loss). Therefore, we are doing ourselves a great disservice when we continue to consume these beverages.
4. Caffeine actually makes you feel more tired
A few friends had warned me that the more coffee I drink, the more tired I would become. It provides an initial artificial boost of energy that would quickly wear out our reserves, making us feel drained and flat out by the end of the day. I noticed when I cut down my intake of coffee from 2 strong cups a day to half a cup (taken only in the morning), I was still alert at night. But when I consume lots of coffee, I feel very tired and just fall asleep but wake up with pain in the kidney areas.
5. Caffeine may aggrevate negative emotions or amplify nervousness or palpations
Somehow it seemed to amplify the adrenaline affect- if you are nervous about a public presentation, drink a cup of coffee and your hands start to shake from nervousness. It also may make you feel more stressed up and makes it harder to relax. Too much of coffee may max out the resource so badly that the mind can’t even think straight.
6. Can trigger hypoglicemia
For my mom, she would get hypo when she consume coffee with bread spread with butter and jam. Within half and hour of eating, she would start to shake and break out in cold sweat and feel very hungry- even though she had eaten 4 pieces of bread. For me, it is coffee and bread with peanut butter -within half and hour, I would feel hungry. If I take instant noodles with coffee, it seemed to wreck my emotions- making me more irritable. Of course, once I am aware of this, I can try to reduce the effect through deep breathing- but I still avoid this on working days. But notice that the common item is the coffee. Different people, it may be different food combinations but do be more aware that certain food combinations can affect your emotions and moods.
7. Trigger early onset of osteoarthritis or drying of the fluids on your knee caps
I already have that– because of my love for iced milk tea (iced lemon tea also can do the same thing).
8. Uncontrolled blood sugar- despite controlling diet and having adequate exercise
I’ve long suspected that coffee seemed to wreck havoc on our blood sugar levels. If you have done everything, including reducing your stress levels and cutting down on oily food, but your blood sugar is still uncontrolled, if you are taking that coffee/tea (even without sugar or milk), it’s time to eliminate it.
We can become addicted to caffeine- and would suffer the classic withdrawal symptoms as we attempt to eliminate it. At the beginning, we may just start by cutting our daily dosages and replacing them with non caffeinated beverages. If we intuitively feel that the stuff is no good for us and yet we cannot stay away from it, perhaps it is also time to examine the emotional and psychological root cause behind it.
