are you still drinking coffee? 10 reasons to quit right now

Are you still drinking coffee? Do you start the day with your morning cup of joe, then hit the Starbucks after lunch?

Folks, coffee is not your friend. That caffeine high comes with a steep price tag — your health. The truth is, caffeine is a psychotropic drug. If we want to be healthy, all caffeinated foods and beverages should be avoided. This includes green and black teas and chocolate.

I’m not going to lie and say I don’t eat chocolate now and again. And I do drink decaf (one cup per day). You don’t have to eliminate caffeine entirely from your diet. But the less caffeine you consume, the better off you are. And if you want to be healthy, it’s time to kick coffee to the curb.

top 10 reasons to quit coffee

1. caffeine suppresses your appetite

Caffeine is a natural appetite suppressant. So if you think you’re not hungry, it could be the drug you’re taking before you eat breakfast. Uh, yeah, that would be coffee. Hunger is our body’s way of telling us that it needs nutrients. If we take a drug that interferes with that, we’re depriving our body of what it needs to function.

2. caffeine depletes feel-good neurotransmitters

But that’s not all. Coffee not only suppresses the appetite, but it also damages our ability to produce feel-good brain chemicals, or neurotransmitters. You may have heard of serotonin. That’s the brain chemical most of us don’t seem to have enough of. It’s the reason so many people are taking antidepressants. Did you know that caffeine actually depletes serotonin?  Bottom line: Coffee is a cheap high that robs us of the building blocks for good brain chemistry.

3. caffeine hurts our adrenal glands

Epinephrine, also known as adrenaline, is a neurotransmitter that is produced by the adrenal glands from the amino acids phenylalanine and tyrosine. When you eat protein-rich foods that contain amino acids, your body naturally produces these catecholamines and other brain chemicals that make you feel energetic and focused and ready to get to work. Caffeine is a shortcut that gives us a quick fix of catecholamines. However, caffeine exhausts your adrenals —- the very organs you need to help you produce more catecholamines. Hence, the more you drink coffee, the more you need coffee. Did I mention that caffeine is an addictive, psychotropic drug?

4. caffeine makes you fat

Our thyroid gland controls our metabolism. Low thyroid function = slow metabolism and weight gain. Caffeine stresses the adrenal glands. Our thyroid gland works in tandem with our adrenals. We need healthy adrenals for the thyroid to work properly. So if you’re stressing out your adrenal glands with coffee, you’re slowing down your metabolism.

5. caffeine lowers your sex drive

When our adrenal glands are exhausted, they can’t produce sufficient sex hormones. For one, testosterone. (Yes, even women produce testosterone, although not as much as men.) Low testosterone = low sex drive.

6. caffeine hurts fertility

Progesterone means “for gestation.” Women need adequate progesterone in order to get pregnant and carry a pregnancy to term. Stress requires that we use more and more cortisol. When our adrenal glands are burned out, we can’t make enough cortisol. Often referred to as the progesterone steal, your body will steal as much progesterone as it needs to make cortisol.

7. caffeine causes pms

Stress is always connected to PMS. When we drink coffee, we stress the adrenals, which increases cortisol levels. This blocks progesterone from its receptors. Extra progesterone is needed to deal with the blockade of its receptors by cortisol.

8. caffeine causes insomnia

Caffeine has been found to reduce total sleep time. Research shows that people who consume more than 250 milligrams of caffeine (2-3 cups of coffee) per day tend to have poor sleep quality.

9. caffeine causes malnutrition

In addition to the fact that caffeine suppresses the appetite, caffeine also causes an increased loss of thiamin and other B vitamins, calcium, minerals, sodium, chloride, potassium, magnesium, and zinc. “Coffee and tea consumption at the time of a meal can significantly decrease iron absorption. Tea can cause iron absorption to drop by 60 percent and coffee can cause a 50 percent decrease in iron uptake.” (Source)

10. caffeine can make you sick

Caffeine suppresses immune function. “In all, more than 150 hormones are produced by the adrenals or metabolized from adrenal hormones. One group, known as glucocorticoids (including cortisol), act as a brake on the immune systes. Scientists have recently learned that excess glucocorticoid production (caused by stress and caffeine) can profoundly suppress immunity.”

more reasons to quit coffee

Want more reasons to quit coffee? See my post: 30 Reasons to Quit Coffee.

how to quit coffee

Are you ready to get off coffee and caffeine? I was able to quit coffee in a matter of a couple days with no withdrawl, no headaches, no fatigue, or other unpleasant symptoms. Read my post: How to Quit Coffee.  For sources, please see my post: 30 Reasons to Quit Coffee.

This post is generously contributed to Nourished Kitchen by Ann Marie of the wildly popular blog Cheeseslave.  She writes about nutrient-dense foods, shares the occasional recipe and talks a lot about simple ways you can detox your life and get healthy.

Photo credit: Coffee break by Francisco Javier Argel, on Flickr