Asleep at Last

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A Surprising Reason for Quitting Coffee

I used to be an exceptionally committed coffee drinker.

I was one of those people who would have included coffee in my list of provisions to take with me to the afterlife, should I be offered such an opportunity.

Then one day, I stopped. Just like that. 

I was starting my day as I always did, reading something for work to get focused while drinking a frothy, rich, ultra-strong espresso from my bright red wake-me-up coffee mug. 

Ahh ... the sharp, rich taste, the soothing smell, the jolt of energy, the feeling of euphoric upliftedness ...

For some reason, that day, as I savored the experience, my book at hand, my attention shifted from my head to my body. From my mental experience to my physical experience. From the excited jolt that I associated with "I am awake" to what was going on in my body.

To my surprise, my mind and body were having very different experiences. 

My body was not happy.

My body was experiencing a fluttery feeling in my solar plexus. It was not pleasant. It was an edgy, agitated, restless feeling that I had mistaken for vitalization. 

I realized that I was completely ungrounded. It was like mistaking a flickering fluorescent light for illumination. 

I never took that next sip of coffee. 

I quit there and then. 

Over time, I noticed some surprising benefits to quitting coffee. 

For one thing, I actually had more energy once I stopped drinking coffee.

I hadn't realized it, but I'd been on a caffeine roller coaster ride. A high, then a low. To get back into the functional energy zone again, I'd drink another coffee. 

But I never felt truly energized. In fact, I'd forgotten what that felt like until I quit coffee.

Before quitting coffee, I’d experience an afternoon slump shortly after lunch. Sometimes I'd nap. Sometimes I'd have another coffee to keep me going. 

However, the rest of the time, I felt like I was slowly slogging uphill all day, feeling less and less lively as the day proceeded. The only thing that kept me going was to not stop.

A few days after quitting coffee I discovered a steady calm energy that stayed with me all day. I literally felt awake and alert from the moment I got up in the morning to about an hour before it was time to go to bed. Then I'd experience a gentle winding down until I was sleepy and ready for bed.

Should you quit coffee? 

Do you absolutely LOVE your morning cup of java and can't imagine living without it?

Despite this, you have an inkling that this delightful drink may be impacting your sleep. You aren't able to get to sleep when it's time for bed and your sleep is shallow, you wake up frequently.

Unfortunately, the culprit may be caffeine.

If you are a daily coffee drinker, ask yourself these questions. Your body may be telling you it’s time for a change.

1. How do you feel? To properly answer this question, you need to actually pay attention to your body for a moment. After a coffee, close your eyes and scan your body from head to toe. Notice what your body is experiencing. 

2. What is the quality of your energy over the course of a day? Is it calm and steady? Erratic? Do you experience extreme peaks and valleys in the quality of your energy or is it fairly steady throughout the day?

3. How's your sleep? Coffee disturbs sleep for many people. There is a physical reason for this, I’ll explain below.

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How Caffeine May Be Affecting Your Sleep

When you consume caffeine, you interfere with a process in your body that tells you that you are sleepy. You temporarily override the message telling you “I’m tired. I haven’t had enough sleep”. 

However, the sleepiness is still there.  Your brain just doesn't know it.  Instead, you feel that "caffeine kick" which you interpret as "feeling awake".

But this is a false message.

Over the course of a day, the brain builds up a chemical called adenosine.

Adenosine fits into receptors in the cells, like keys in a lock. The more adenosine keys in the cell receptors, the more tired you feel. Caffeine is a key that fits in the same lock as adenosine, effectively blocking it from having an effect. However, the amount of adenosine continues to build up in the brain. 

It is only cleared away while you sleep.

This is why caffeine interferes with sleep. Without the signal telling you that you are sleepy, you stay up longer or have a hard time falling asleep when it’s time to go to bed.

If you depend on caffeine to wake you up, this is an indication that you haven’t had enough sleep. With chronic insufficient sleep, you develop what is called "sleep debt" over time. This is the buildup of adenosine that hasn’t been cleared away through sleep.

It’s like living on credit with no money in the bank. In the moment everything is seemingly fine. However, eventually, this situation becomes unsustainable and your financial life suffers.

In the case of chronic sleep debt, this unsustainable situation eventually makes itself known in the form of disease.

When you quit caffeine, you experience signals telling you to get enough sleep and restore your sleep debt.

Tiredness is something to heed. This is your body telling you what it needs.

Why Coffee and Tea are Different When It Comes to Affecting Sleep

If you suspect that coffee may be interfering with your sleep, try tea instead.

The caffeine in coffee is exhausting.

The caffeine in coffee comes in a form that dumps the full shot right into your bloodstream. This then heads to your brain and triggers the release of adrenaline. That adrenaline is what causes your "coffee hit", that feeling of jump-starting your day.

However, this adrenaline rush overwhelms and exhausts the body, which has to work hard to counteract and clear the adrenaline.

After the stimulation of caffeine through coffee, the body ends up more exhausted than it was before. If you have a coffee habit, you might be masking that exhaustion with more coffee.

The caffeine in tea is packaged differently.

It is bound to other molecules that cause the caffeine to release slowly, in a manner that the body can better tolerate. The effect is longer lasting.

This is especially true of green tea, which has extraordinary health benefits.

Consider switching from coffee to green tea, or another low-caffeine beverage.

This alternative can still provide you with a little caffeine in a manner your body can better tolerate.

People have different tolerances to caffeine

Some people are not much affected by caffeine. There is the occasional person who can have a coffee before going to bed. This is rare.

At the other end of the scale is the person who can’t take any caffeine at all, without it interfering with their sleep.

Coffee typically takes about 7 hours for half of the caffeine to clear from the system. So, if you want to go to bed 10:00 and have had a coffee at 3:00 – you still have half of all that caffeine interfering with the sleep signal.

People who think they are night owls could be simply too wired on caffeine to experience natural sleepiness.

A general rule of thumb is to not drink a caffeinated beverage after 2:00 and if you have normal tolerance to it.

If you are sensitive to caffeine, it is better to avoid coffee altogether after mid-morning. Or to stop drinking coffee and go for tea instead.

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Ready to Quit Coffee? How to quit so that you don’t miss it at all

Coffee can be difficult to give up. Although it is not classified as addictive in the truest sense of the word, people can become dependent on it.

The key to successfully quitting coffee is to distinguish between two types of dependency - chemical and behavioral.

The chemical dependency associated with coffee is two-fold.

One comes from a boost in dopamine and other feel-good chemicals, that coffee stimulates.  The other aspect comes from the caffeine in coffee masking receptors in our brain that tell us we feel tired.

Behavioral dependency is to do with what we associate with experience.

If we experience a reward, we want more of whatever is associated with that reward.  With coffee, we associate the reward of feeling more alert and uplifted with the coffee itself as well as everything surrounding the drinking of coffee.

We associate the aroma, the taste, the way the coffee is made, the environment in which we drink it - all with the experiential reward. When we consciously decouple the reward and the associations, we can adjust our behaviors accordingly.

Quit the coffee, keep the ritual

A ritual is a powerful practice that has symbolic as well as practical meaning. In addition to waking you up, your morning coffee feels like self-care.

This can include the warmth, aroma, and sense of comfort coffee provides. Your coffee time may be an island of calm before you start your hectic day.

Rituals provide scaffolding for our lives, our routines, and even our identities.

If you are going to quit coffee, you need to keep the ritual and ditch the coffee.

The way you do that is to find a replacement for coffee. Choose another beverage that will satisfy your senses.

Preserve as much of the ritual as you can. Prepare it with the same care, do the same things while you are drinking your new morning beverage.

Your body will resist at first

You will likely feel more tired for a few days before you feel better.

That’s because your brain has adjusted to the caffeine by trying to produce more of the sleepiness signal molecules. When you stop drinking coffee, your brain will be flooded with it and you’ll feel much more tired for a period of time.

Don’t worry, in a few days you’ll adjust.

Consider transitioning slowly.

Some people like to transition to decaf coffee.

You might start with half and half before going to full decaffeinated coffee.  Be aware that decaffeinated coffee still has about 30% of the caffeine that is in regular coffee.

You might transition to another caffeinated beverage with less caffeine. 

Hot chocolate and green tea are caffeinated but much less so. Additionally, they contain cofactors that sooth and balance out the effect of the caffeine.

You can still enjoy coffee.

From time to time.

Make coffee a treat that you indulge in once in a while, rather than an everyday event.

As I write this, I am drinking my morning cup of green tea.

Now I am a green tea connoisseur. I get it from a local shop specializing in tea. The owners make annual trips to China to select the best tea from remote mountainous regions.

And I have that same feeling of starting my day with a warm comforting drink, and all is well.


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