Caffeine and Adrenals

>> How many cups of coffee do you think the average American consumes per day? >> AUDIENCE: Three. >> That's good. Three and a half cups of coffee a day. I grew up consuming zero cups of coffee a day. And so I always... I really honestly, I always thought there was something wrong with me because everyone was moving so much faster and talking so much faster. And it never even dawned on me that they were all on drugs. [laughter] Right? And then when Starbucks started to open, then everyone's like, "You wanna go to Starbucks?" And I tried it and it just did... It wreaked havoc and my body didn't know what to do with the caffeine, so I avoided it. Took me really years to understand that the majority of people who I was speaking with were hyped up on caffeine, drugs. I call it drug in a mug. Can you imagine, one day, like all the Starbucks shut down and there was no coffee, and people would come to work and fall asleep. Not only that, they probably wouldn't even get to work. And so it's really important to understand the extent of how much people are speaking faster, and moving faster, and doing things because they're, you know, basically shooting up every day some form of speed to get themselves moving. And if they didn't do that, who would that person be if they try to detox off of the caffeine? People don't even know how to take vacation because their body doesn't want to slow down to face the reality of not having to go to work. And there's certain side effects from that. One side effect is that, you know, there is no energy in caffeine. You know, what caffeine does is it pumps adrenaline into the body or gets the adrenal glands working in a way that they wouldn't work naturally. So people are pumped up and then they do all the things that they do, except the adrenal glands weren't really created for that to happen so there is something that more and more people have, which is adrenal exhaustion. Where they are able to go, go, go, run, run, run, super mom and all those kinds of things, except that the body wasn't really created to have eight days a week and 60-hour workweek, so there's a certain exhaustion that happens as a result of that. Different people have a different capacity to assimilate caffeine. For some people, they can, you know, four or five cups a day and they're doing fine. And for other people... How many of you do fine with coffee? You know exactly how much of the drug you can take and it just works for you. And then how many people are very caffeine sensitive and... Great. So it's important that you understand that Integrative Nutrition as an organization that really speaks about bio-individuality and this being neutral, understand that I and we don't have really a position on coffee, except that it's very bio-individual. And for some people, they can deal with a lot of caffeine in a day, and their adrenals, and their kidney, and everything works fine. And for other people, that exact same four, five cups of coffee a day would end them up in the hospital. Do you see that? So rather than have a position, coffee is bad or coffee is good, you can just ask people how much caffeine do you have, is that working for you, are you able to sleep at night. I can't tell you how many people would come to me and say that, "I have insomnia," and didn't realize that maybe it's connected to how much coffee you're drinking because, you know, they say, the coffee is gonna be fine as long as you stop having at a certain point in the day because people get the caffeine, but some people get it out right away, some people can even drink coffee to fall asleep. Have you heard that? And then other people, if they have a coffee in the morning, even at night, they're not sleeping well, so it's very bio-individual and you understand that. Also, on the plus side, coffee has certain phytonutrients and they help stabilize free radicals in the body, help assimilate vitamin C, and even prevent tumor growth. We have our vegetables and we have our reds, and our greens, and we are getting our phytonutrients from fruits and vegetables. But for most Americans, they actually don't eat fruits and vegetables. I'm not sure if you know that or not. The most popular vegetables in America are... >> Potato. >> French fries, potato chips, ketchup. And iceberg lettuce that comes on the hamburger, you know, or the salad. And in terms of fruit, by far, the most popular fruit in America is orange juice. And so after those things that I've named, the other things fall way further behind. So in some ways, if you take away a person's coffee, you're taking away their main source of phytonutrients. And so what I used to do when I would try to work people off of caffeine was I would just ask them... I was surprised because I would say, "Well, why do you drink the coffee?" And then a lot of people would say, "Because of the energy." And if they did, I would try to switch them to green tea or some form of tea. And if they... A lot of people say, "I love the smell. I love the taste." And I'll try to switch them to either decaf or coffee substitute, something like that. But I want you to understand that this, you know, there are certain flashpoints in the area of nutrition. One of them is how much animal protein a person has is a big flashpoint. And the other one is around caffeine because it really changes how people speak, how people interact, how people live their lives. How many of you love coffee? Make some noise. How many people, you and coffee do not get along very well? Isn't that cool that we can have a bio-individual perspective rather than saying, you know, any food is good for you or bad for you? So again, coffee really stimulates the adrenals, it increases a person's heart rate. On the other hand though, it can lead to exhaustion. You know, as I used to live in New York City and at certain point, I moved from New York City to live at the Kripalu. And I swear for the first two or three months, I thought I was... I really thought that there was something seriously wrong with me and that I was dying because for the first time after 45 years of my life, I was in a quiet, peaceful place for a long term and I realized just how completely exhausted I was. And for days and weeks and months I could not get out of bed, I was just so exhausted. And there's many people who are just exhausted and they have a health concern like, "I want to lose weight" or "I have heart condition or I have this condition." But really, that's not the problem. The problem is that they've gone for 40, 50 years and they're exhausted so their body has lost its capacity to heal itself by itself. And so it's important that you can separate the two because medicine is so specialized. So you're gonna go, you know, the heart person will not be like, "Oh, it's coffee," or, "Oh, how exhausted are you?" But you're the one who brings that conversation to them and helps them to see the interconnectedness. Another thing about coffee, the fact that it focuses on adrenaline and the adrenal glands, in traditional Chinese medicine, there... In Western medicine, it's all separate. So if you have an adrenal issue, it's not related to your kidneys, except that the adrenal glands are on the kidneys, right? So in Western medicine, you have it all separated and if you have a kidney issue, you go to the kidney specialist. You have an adrenal issue, you... Do you know what I'm saying? They have it all... It's like going to get your car fixed. If you have a radiator issue, they're not gonna look at the carburetor. And I think we lose a lot in that process because there is this thing that I call geographic proximity. It's a term I made up, which says that if in the body there is geographic proximity from one organ to the other, the likelihood that that other organ will be affected is very, very high because it's like a traffic jam in the organism and that region is in crisis. So with the caffeine, you have the adrenal issue, which is affecting the kidney, and in Chinese medicine, it's all connected, the adrenal with the kidney, with the bladder, with the reproductive organs. You can see, right, it's all one channel. And so one of things I noticed with my clients is that because most are adrenal exhausted, the trickle down effect then creates issues with their bladder and with their reproductive organs.