Say It Isn't So....Could Your Daily Coffee Be Secretly Sabotaging You?

Secret Saboteurs are things or people we think benefit us, but these saboteurs essentially want you to fail at life.  Wait though…coffee?  I know…I love it too.  The morning coffee ritual.  Maybe not even mornings necessarily for me, it’s the taste of a real good one.  Coffee foam, maybe a little cinnamon, some rose petals…even a dirty chai.  The taste and presentation can be so so appealing.

I don’t know about you, but I didn’t really drink much coffee until later in my 20’s.  I started drinking it before work.  It’s what people do.  Drink coffee on their way to work, sometimes at work, sometimes after a meal.  It can so much be a social thing.

Almost everyone I know has some sort of relationship with coffee or caffeine.  The ritual of it is enmeshed into our daily lives, all over television, movies, culture trends, society is dripping in it these days with sometimes two coffee shops almost next door to one another.

I noticed in myself about 6 months ago that I was drinking a coffee every morning and was curious if it was a habit, if it was helping me in any way, or a little bit of both.  I decided to quit for 30 days and see.  This is what I noticed.  I didn’t find myself to be more tired or have detox headaches like some people experience.  What it opened for me was space.  Space to feel.  It almost felt like the coffee was taking up space in my being and contributing to unconscious suppression of my feelings.  As time went on and I was caffeine-free for the full 30 days, I started to notice and feel more of my emotions.  Sadness, joy, grief, shame….all of it.  It came in like waves that I’d ride like a surfer who's at one with the ocean.  It was interesting.  I concluded it was definitely a habit for me and perhaps even interfering with my body’s natural function.

I decided to keep going and am now at 6 months (mostly) caffeine free.  I can be honest…I do enjoy a latte or cortado every now and again…maybe 1 or 2 a month when I am out or if I want a conscious boost of energy to write, for example. 

There’s something else though that I learned recently about caffeine and it really got me thinking.  It was found in this study, drinking coffee can reduce blood flow to the brain up to 40%. This is a huge saboteur.

Caffeine can also affect the limbic system of the brain.  This part of the brain engages us into ‘fight or flight’ mode.  Ever feel your nervous system spike when you drink it?  This could be why.  Did you know that if we experience early trauma (which many of us do), it can actually inhibit the development of limbic part of the brain?  When we are young, our brains develop and grow. What can happen as a result of this, is what we call ‘brain fog’ or even memory blindness – forgetting complete memories or phases of our life.  Can you image the effect it could be physiologically having on you?

What if…every day that we drink coffee on a regular basis (1, 2…maybe even 3 cups a day) we in the slightest – so incremental that we wouldn’t notice – engage our limbic system and it goes into a minimal range of fight or flight?  What might happen over time if we continued to drink coffee every day?  Think about it.  We wouldn’t even notice.  It would become our new baseline state and we would normalize any feelings or personality traits associated with it as part of us.

Do you drink coffee?  How often?  It’s not just coffee, it’s energy drinks, teas, anything with caffeine.  I invite you to experiment with removing or reducing your caffeine intake for 30 days and see what unfolds for you. Be open to what you might experience and listen to your body during the process. It holds a plethora of important information for us.

"Once there is a distance between you and your thought process, a new freedom is born. With this freedom, a new perception arises." ~Sadhguru