Caffeine and Adrenals
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>> 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.