In this article I will answer questions Is drinking coffee harmful? and how to stop drinking coffee. I have not been drinking coffee for several years, and recently I have drastically reduced the use of tea. In this decision, I see only solid pluses. About why I live better without caffeine, I will tell a little bit later in this post.
Coffee is an ancient drink, its toning and taste properties have been known to people for a long time. Drinking coffee has become firmly established in human life: for many people, no morning passes without a cup of hot coffee. Coffee is loved not only for taste and smell, but also for its invigorating effect. It’s hard to imagine how to wake up and start doing things without taking the morning dose of caffeine.
This drink awakens our sleeping consciousness, relieves fatigue, gives motivation and a burst of energy. It may seem that without coffee you cannot live and work, and if we stop drinking it, we will always nod off, and any work will be difficult. I assure you it is not. You can live without coffee. And why refuse him - will be discussed further.
Is it harmful to drink coffee?
First of all, remember that coffee contains caffeine, and caffeine is a drug belonging to the class of stimulants of the central nervous system (cocaine and amphetamine, for example, belong to the same class). The fact that some substances have acquired the status of legal drugs (alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, and a lot of drugs that are on your shelves) does not support the lack of narcotic properties of these drugs. It refers, rather, to the legal part of the case (what is forbidden and what is not), and not to the medical part. For a doctor, alcohol addict is the same addict.
Of course, coffee can not be attributed to hard drugs. Caffeine addiction does not occur with such serious consequences as, for example, alcohol or heroin. But coffee addiction is still a form of addiction and has its consequences. Caffeine is harmful to health, like most drugs.
Effect of coffee on fatigue
Caffeine improves performance, improves mood and brings the body and mind to tone. The energy that comes from drinking a cup of coffee does not come out of nowhere, does not come from the space around you and is not contained in the cup itself. This sudden energy of the body, under the action of caffeine, draws from your internal energy reserves.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to take this energy for free. If you used it, then later you will lack it.
Let me explain this by example. When I began to drink tea much less frequently, then, as paradoxical as it may sound, I noticed an increase in working capacity during the day. Previously, if I drank a cup of strong tea in the morning, then after lunch I felt very sleepy and, as a result, lack of efficiency. Any activity was carried out with difficulty and without desire. I did not associate it with tea, I thought it was natural to feel sleepy after a heavy meal.
I used to compensate for this drowsiness with a regular dose of caffeine contained in tea. But this helped me for a while: after some time, I again began to feel tired. Then I stopped drinking tea every day. I noticed that this afternoon languor was not observed in those days when I did without an invigorating drink! Maybe in the morning I was a little less cheerful because I did not drink tea, but for a whole day, I had more energy.
I could safely work after dinner with good performance. I began to do more, including, my articles began to appear faster. Maybe this is not noticeable on this blog, but for several months I have been writing articles for two sites: this and its English version.
Like every drug, caffeine has its own “waste” (it's just not so noticeable, because coffee is not a very strong drug). Following a sharp surge of energy, there is the same sharp decline in strength. Imagine an athlete participating in a race that lasts for several hours. After the starting shot sounded, this athlete didn’t count his strength, and with bulging eyes and protruding tongue jumped forward with such speed that the other participants of the competitions began to choke with dust from his heels, spinning behind.
Naturally, he quickly exhales, feels sharp fatigue and dehydration and, unable to continue to run, takes a step, while those who were behind, at a moderate speed will overtake him. And all because he rushed at once and spent all the energy at the very beginning of the competition.
About the same thing happens when you drink coffee. The body takes a lot of strength at once. But then these forces will have to be repaid.
Refusal from the daily use of coffee contributes to a uniform expenditure of energy throughout the day. The body itself calculates energy, so that it is enough for the whole day, and not just for the first half of it. Drinking coffee and using other stimulants is, in my opinion, means disrupting the natural balance of your body.
“How, then, to cope with morning sleepiness? I can't do anything until I drink coffee! ”- you will object.
Caffeine addiction
The fact is that if the body gets used to maintain activity by taking stimulants, it becomes difficult for it to cope with active work without them. An avid coffee lover drinks it in order to bring the body and head to a “working” state. Drink does not bring him such a sharp and intense surge of power, which he can give an inexperienced consumer of coffee, who joined the drink recently. If an avid "connoisseur" drinks - he feels "normal", if he does not drink - he becomes ill.
What distinguishes him from a person without caffeine addiction? The fact that he needs coffee to feel normal, but a person without dependence does not. When drug use, including alcohol and tobacco, enters a chronic stage, the addict begins to take his drug only to feel normal.
If, at the beginning, drunkenness brings pleasure and some unusual experience, then later, when this hobby turns into alcoholism, a person drinks so that the head does not hurt, so that the hands do not shake, so that depression does not torment ... And all the pleasure from drinking the substance comes down to the pleasure of satisfying a strong need.
All the symptoms that an avid coffee lover feels on if he does not take a dose of his favorite drink: drowsiness, fatigue, apathy, lack of motivation, bad mood - all this is a consequence of the dependence that has appeared! No one finds it surprising that a smoker becomes ill without cigarettes! Why should we be surprised that an avid coffee lover becomes sick without coffee?
Caffeine addiction causes its "breaking", and this is not surprising. When the addiction passes - “breaking” disappears. If you stop drinking coffee, after a while you will be fine without it and you will no longer feel drowsiness and apathy in the morning! Of course, this will happen only if you get enough sleep and are in a satisfactory physical form. Many people forget this because they do not attribute coffee to the status of a drug and think that these symptoms will accompany them as soon as they give up caffeine. But it is not.
On my watch 10-25, I continued to write this article at 9-30, and I woke up today at 7-30, slept for about 7 hours. I have not consumed a single milligram of caffeine, while I feel pretty awake. I have already lost the caffeine habit and I don’t need to take it in order to keep myself motivated and strong. When you lose the habit, you also stop needing this dark drink.
About how to stop drinking coffee, let's talk a little later. Now I will continue to talk about the dangers of this drink.
Influence on concentration and prioritization
Coffee increases anxiety and disrupts concentration, especially in high dosages. If it is difficult for you to concentrate, you cannot sit still and relax, and you suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, then there should be no question of drinking many cups of coffee a day. Coffee can aggravate the situation and develop your chronic anxiety and constant restlessness.
On one blog I read about the very interesting observations of its author, who also refused coffee. He writes that coffee enhances some aspects of thinking, but weakens others. The speed of thinking increases, but at the same time, there may be a lack in other areas of our mind.
Under the action of caffeine, a person becomes more active, he can quickly perform some tasks, but he loses the ability to prioritize these tasks well. He can spend a lot of time on performing some minor actions and not pay attention to the most important. Because under the action of caffeine, it is bursting with energy and can not wait to send it somewhere. He loses his patience to think about where this energy will find the most effective use.
In my opinion, this is a very accurate observation. I also observed this effect when I used coffee or green Chinese tea. I could wake up, drink strong tea and spend half a day setting up some plug-in on my site, which was not really needed. If I had spent the same time writing an article, it would have been much more productive.
Also, caffeine consumption affected the style of my articles; I think the most attentive readers can pay attention to this. When I drank a mug of Pu-erh (strong green Chinese tea), sentences and words flowed out of me like a bucket, but at the same time, the articles lost much in structure. There were many complex proposals with an abundance of turns. It was as if some kind of sensation of the whole text had disappeared in all its length, and I was puzzled only to convey the thought that I have in my head now, without subordinating it to common logic.
As a result, a lot had to be rewritten. Maybe, without tea, I began to write fewer words per minute of time, to think more about the sentences, but then I manage to write more in a day, as I distribute my energy more efficiently throughout the entire working day. In my opinion, the quality of my articles has become better. Now I can stop at every word and think about how the article will develop further. Something I can fix right away, and not to redo it later. In addition, it became easier for me to concentrate, I became less distracted from the main task.
If your work involves a clear and competent prioritization and concentration, then excessive coffee consumption will be superfluous for you.
Coffee and excess activity
Sometimes, it is difficult to find an individual dose of caffeine. We ourselves may not notice how we drink several mugs while talking or working, which leads us to the peak of excitement and activity. At such moments, the energy appears much more than is needed to do the work.
After all, in order to wield a mouse at the office desk does not need a lot of energy. But on the crest of caffeine spirit, a lot of strength burns empty.
We will again draw an analogy with the athlete runner, who briskly rushed forward from the start, not counting his strength. In this example, he still ran out of the track and instead of running in a straight line, began to follow an elongated arc, which increased the distance he needed to overcome and, at the same time, began to juggle with three dumbbells on the run, just in case.
He is wasting a lot of the energy that he needs to run, making completely meaningless, in terms of achieving the task, action.
The same happens if you drink a lot of coffee: the body uses a lot of strength and these forces, then it will not return! Some people spend this excess energy on meaningless activity, such as chatter tongue or torsion on the chair, others do not find a way out of this energy. And those and others feel fatigue afterwards. Why do you spend extra strength? To start, just reduce your coffee intake, drink just as much as you need for work.
Effect of coffee on the nervous system
Drinking large amounts of coffee leads to nervousness, anxiety, increased nervous excitability and depletion of nerve cells. I would not recommend drinking a lot of coffee for those who suffer from nervous diseases, irritability, panic attacks, etc.
Caffeine puts your body into a state of stress, stimulating the production of stress hormones: adrenaline, cortisol and norepinephrine. Continuous stimulation can have a bad effect on the state of the nervous system, blood pressure, heart and immune system.
Other harm to coffee for the body
Coffee can also be harmful because:
- Increases blood pressure and is harmful for those suffering from hypertension.
- Harmful to the cardiovascular system. Excessive consumption of coffee causes heart disease.
- Leads to dehydration.
- Contraindicated in pregnancy.
- If used on an empty stomach, it can lead to a stomach ulcer.
- Flush out vitamins from the body.
- May cause chronic headaches.
- Promotes sleep disturbance
The benefits of coffee
It would be unfair not to mention in this article about the benefits of coffee. Of course, moderate consumption of this drink has a number of beneficial properties, for example, reducing the risk of many diseases (Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, type 2 diabetes). Also, coffee contains antioxidants that prevent the destruction of cells in your body.
But, first of all, caffeine is a drug and moderate use always threatens to become excessive. Secondly, many useful properties of coffee are not associated with caffeine (which, basically, all risks and harm are associated), but are manifested due to other chemical compounds that are present in the drink. Thirdly, coffee is not far the only source of antioxidants, such as are found in vegetables, fruits and many other products. Coffee can not replace other sources of antioxidants! And to reduce the risk of many diseases you can help a healthy lifestyle and a balanced diet. Unlike coffee, these methods have no side effects.
But if you drink more than two mugs a day, you risk to feel all the negative consequences of drinking coffee. Those who drink 10 cups a day every day should not justify their addiction with the beneficial properties of coffee. After all, these people do not drink it because of the benefits. It is like a drunken drunk will proudly talk about antioxidants found in red wine and slow down cell destruction!
Even moderate dosages of coffee provoke fatigue in the evening, if you drink coffee in the morning. In addition, there are problems with concentration and the ability to prioritize, which I wrote above.
Unfortunately, you have to pay for everything. There are no completely harmless and, moreover, useful drugs. In my opinion, the benefits of coffee are not fundamental and are not indispensable, and the risks and potential harm are not so small. Therefore, I believe that it is better, nevertheless, to abandon the daily use of this drink in favor of their own health.
How to stop drinking coffee?
Coffee is not tobacco: you can throw gradually. Next, I will tell you how to smoothly reduce the amount of caffeine consumed.
Go to tea
Go for green or black tea: these drinks contain less caffeine than coffee and have wonderful taste properties. Personally, I have always preferred green tea to any other kind of tea. Now the market of imported Chinese (and Japanese) tea is very actively developing in our country. Try different tastes, there are very nice varieties!
Also, it can be ordered at ebay online auction, it will be cheaper. True, at the time of this writing (June 2013), the Russian post is very slow, and there is a risk to wait a few months for a package before you can sip fragrant tea from the green plantations of China.
The best part about green tea is its effect! In my opinion, it is better than the action of coffee. Of course, the effect is subjective and depends on each person. But similar to my observations made by other lovers of green tea. The fact is that green tea acts on me much more “purely” compared to coffee. When I drank coffee, the vigor from the drink was accompanied by an increase in pressure (for those who rarely drink coffee, the effect of increased pressure is most noticeable), acceleration of heartbeat, some kind of muscle tension. And it was not very nice.
Tea, in my opinion, acts much thinner and softer. The above side effects are hardly noticeable if you do not drink a lot. It turns out some more "pure" cheerfulness, without unpleasant sensations in the body.
In addition, in green tea, on average, there is three times less caffeine than in coffee (This does not apply to green tea "from bags" there is a lot of caffeine - do not drink it)! Зеленый чай также содержит антиоксиданты, витамины и препятствует развитию многих заболеваний. Однозначно выбор в пользу чая, если выбирать между ним и кофе.
Известные сорта зеленого чая:
- Улун (не совсем зеленый чай, но близко к нему)
- Тегуанинь
- Пуэр
- Да Хун Пао
Снижайте частоту употребления кофеина
Если вы пьете кофе по выходным - перестаньте это делать. Зачем вам кофе, если в выходные вам не нужно работать? Для начала, пейте только на работе. Снизьте количество потребляемых в день кружек. А потом, как будете готовы, снизьте количество рабочих дней, когда вы пьете напитки с содержанием кофеина (лучше перейти на чай). Например, пейте не больше трех кружек в неделю. Да-да, именно в неделю, а не в день. Сначала это кажется сложным, но, по мере постепенного отвыкания, это будет сделать не так тяжело.
Учитесь просыпаться без кофе!
Утренняя зарядка - отличный способ пробудиться и прийти в себя после сна. Это естественный заряд бодрости для тела и, к тому же, полезно для здоровья. О том как заставить себя заниматься спортом, читайте по ссылке.
Пейте горячие напитки без кофеина
Если хочется горячего и вкусного напитка, то есть повод попробовать какие-нибудь сорта травяного чая. Это не совсем чай, в строгом понимании этого слова, но зато не содержит кофеин. Попробуйте, например, Ройбуш.
Используйте кофе в экстренных случаях
Пейте кофе, если вам ночью нужно вести машину, а вы до этого не спали и вам как воздух необходим заряд энергии. Или, в том случае, если вы слишком мало времени провели в кровати, а вам требуется работать.
Кофе - стимулятор, поэтому употребляйте его в особых ситуациях, не нужно превращать это в каждодневную привычку!
Старайтесь высыпаться
Уделяйте достаточно времени сну. Не нужно работать на износ. Никакая работа не стоит ваших нервов и здоровья.
Заключение - почему люди пьют кофе?
Разные люди пьют кофе по разным причинам. Для кого-то это просто пробуждение. Для других - это способ побороть скуку и занять руки. Для третьих - это любимый вкус.
Бывает и так, что увлечение кофе является следствием недовольства своей работой: рабочая деятельность скучна и представляет из себя полнейшую рутину, именно поэтому многие люди находят в кофе недостающую им мотивацию заниматься нелюбимым делом. Ведь кофеин активизирует резервные запасы энергии, которая начинает искать выход. И становится все равно, как ее потратить - лишь бы потратить.
У кофеиновой зависимости могут быть причины, которые скрыты внутри вашей психики. Может быть, чтобы перестать пить кофе, вам нужно сменить работу, а может научится ее по-другому воспринимать или избавиться от хронического беспокойства.
Но ведь кофе вкусный!
So what? Несколько лет назад я употреблял по 3-4 литра пива каждый день. Вкус пива казался мне божественным и бесподобным. Как же я буду жить без этого чудесного вкуса, думал я тогда? Но, прошло время, и теперь я вообще не употребляю алкоголь, в любом виде. Без вкуса алкогольных напитков, который я раньше так страстно любил, я спокойно обхожусь. Все дело в привычке. Не переживайте, по вкусу кофе вы не будете долго скучать.
Сейчас на часах 16-20
И я написал эту статью (а продолжил я ее писать сегодня в 9-00) и проверил ее на наличие ошибок. Если бы я выпил кофе с утра, то я бы к этому времени уже устал и не мог бы делать то, что требует от меня наибольших умственных усилий, а именно, писать статьи, потому что кофеин вытянул бы из меня необходимый запас энергии. Я бы оставил это на завтра и все завтрашнее утро потратил бы на то, чтобы доделать этот пост и все проверить.
Но без кофеина моя работа стала продуктивнее. Поэтому завтра с утра я проверю еще раз эту статью и приступлю к написанию другой. Вот так =).
