COFFEE!!!

Coffee!!!! Coffee coffee coffee coffeeeeeee!!!!

Oh coffee. I have a very good relationship with coffee. Sometimes I doubted our relationship, but right now, coffee and I are in a good place.

Coffee is one of those things that if you look on the internet you are going to find a whole bunch of disagreements on if it is good for you or not (kind of like red wine). Coffee is a stimulant, it is addictive, and it stains your teeth…. It can also be a great pre workout supplement to help aid performance, contains many nutrients and antioxidants, and is shown to help lower your risk for or prevent certain diseases (such as diabetes, liver disease and dementia).

In my mind, coffee is delicious… ok but seriously… like wine, coffee is a natural substance that has been being consumed for centuries. The story goes that in the 10^th century, a goat herder in Ethiopia noticed, after his goats ate the berries of a certain tree, that his goats went falling asleep at night. The drink was then brewed and word spread of its mystical energizing powers.

I say, as long as you aren’t drinking 10 cups a day, and cannot function without it, and you start going through caffeine withdrawals, you are fine. Here is my tip: Don’t drink coffee first thing in the morning. No matter what the first thing you should drink in the morning is water. Period! Take 30 minutes, at least, from when you first wake up to hydrate and allow your body to go through it’s natural waking up process. When you first wake up, your cortisol levels are high (cortisol is a stress hormone, and also is released when blood glucose levels are low). When you drink a caffeinated beverage, the body tends to produce less cortisol and rely of the caffeine in the beverage for that morning boost. Because you are replacing the cortisol with the caffeine, you begin to also increase your tolerance to caffeine. Hence… addiction.

If you need 6 cups of coffee to get you through the day, you probably have a very high tolerance to the caffeine and may want to think about cutting back. Also, if you are drinking coffee all day, you probably don’t have time to drink a sufficient amount of water you should be drinking to counter act the diuretic properties of the caffeine.

“I got 99 problems… and 98 of them could be solved by drinking more water….”

Coffee is the best. It is a hug in a cup. It is that little pat on the back that tells you “hey, you can get through this day”. I shunned my guilt about drinking 2-3 cups of coffee a day a long time ago. Coffee Culture is just too much fun!

I’m in the process of making a San Francisco coffee shop list! Stay tuned!