Am I Addicted to Coffee with Sugar?
“If you missed your morning coffee and now you have a headache and can't concentrate, you might be going through caffeine withdrawal”, says Health Day News.

They report that according to a Johns Hopkins University study, the more caffeine you consume, the more severe withdrawal symptoms are likely to be. “As little as one cup of coffee a day can lead to caffeine addiction.”

“The researchers identified these common withdrawal symptoms: headache, fatigue or drowsiness; depression and irritability; difficulty concentrating and nausea, vomiting and muscle pain or stiffness.”

According to the researchers, everyone should gradually and systematically reduce their caffeine intake so that you may quit the habit without going through these nasty withdrawal symptoms

You’ve heard many sides of this story. Is caffeine really bad for you? Is coffee bad for you? What’s the story on this anyway?

At Caring Medical our approach is two fold.

1. Nobody should be addicted to anything. If you cannot get through your day without coffee, cola, tea, sugar, or some other substance, then you are addicted to it. Being addicted to any substance is not healthy for anyone.

2. Now, you may ask yourself, “Why can I not get through the day without coffee?” or “Why do I have to have sugar every afternoon?” There is an answer to this question.

The answer to this question is, in part, due to your body chemistry and metabolic type. You have heard us talk about this in many of our previous e-newsletters. Here is the bottom line with caffeine and sugar. Both of these substances acidify the blood. So what this means is that consumption of these foods causes your blood pH decline (becomes acidic.) Why would that matter to anyone? Well, if you recall from our previous e-newsletters, abnormalties in blood pH can adversely affect your health and feeling of well-being.

You may have never heard a discussion on this before. What we are talking about is your blood pH. Your blood pH is acidic if your pH is low, and alkaline if it is high. The typical diet for these acidity levels is depicted below:

Acid Blood - pH less than 7.4 - Higher protein, lower carbohydrate diet

Neutral Blood - pH at 7.4 - Mixed diet of protein and carbohydrate diet

Alkaline Blood - pH greater than 7.4 - Higher carbohydrate, lower protein diet

As you can see, if a person who already has acidic blood consumes foods and/or beverages that make the blood more acidic, he/she will start feeling very poorly very quickly!  Most acidic people feel better with protein and fat, and don’t do well with coffee and sweets. Most alkaline people can drink coffee any time of day and not be affected by it, where acidic people usually are kept awake by it. If you are one of the lucky alkaline type people, if you choose to drink coffee, it is best to drink caffeinated organic coffee due to the low levels of chemicals. Most decaf coffee is loaded with chemicals from processing. More on that topic at a later date! Acidic people will be pepped up from coffee, but then they crash a few hours later. For more reading, here is a link to another article on pH that we discussed a few months ago:

http://www.caringmedical.com/media/article.asp?article_id=29

So, what should you do if you are addicted to caffeine or sugar or tea or something else? You need to see a natural medicine physician who can determine your blood pH first of all. Secondly, you may have something else going on that is causing your body to constantly crave “uppers” or things that pep you up. Often time this relates to people whose bodies are under stress. The stress could be physical, emotional, or biochemical. Our bodies are constantly being assaulted every day, especially now given that we are in the midst of the holidays, are fighting off the cold/flus that are going around, and we are not eating the way we should be.   Our doctors here at Caring Medical can run some tests on you to determine if your body is low in the stress hormone called cortisol. They can also recommend some supplements or medications for you to take to offset these problems.

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*Although there are many studies suggesting the benefits of nutritional and herbal supplementation, there is not enough evidence to suggest that supplements, in general, have any beneficial effect on health and disease.
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