Uh-Oh. Great Coffee. (And is it ok for your health?)

I think I may have just found the perfect coffee.

1. It’s shade-grown and songbird friendly (which supports my love of songbirds… see this post: Tweet Tweet
2. It’s decaf. SWISS WATER PROCESS decaffeinated to boot! So hard to find… Why is this so great? With clean-body living, it is necessary for me given my health and low-to-no tolerance to chemicals to seek this out, because this decaffeination process is 100% chemical free. Click here to learn about what this safer-than-conventional decaffeination process is all about: http://www.swisswater.com/
3. It’s organic. Yay.
4. It’s priced comparably, if not cheaper than other good quality coffees.
5. And, of course, it tastes GREAT.

Here it is. Songbird Decaf Coffee, made available by the American Birding Association. (Click to head to their online store.)

The uh-oh is that now that I’m essentially coffee-free, it may be harder to resist on a more regular basis.

I used to be ADDICTED to coffee. Triple venti lattes were my best friends. All of them. And then I was down to “only 1 cup” in the mornings, cup top-brewed, nonetheless. Coffee snob, moi.

I can’t tell you how many times I hear from my clients… “I don’t drink coffee. Well, only 1 cup in the morning. But that’s nothing… … … Right?”

I quit – rather, HAD to quit – coffee about 3 years ago, when my body crashed. I didn’t have any until about six months ago. Now, I’ll have a cup of decaf every now and then, about 2-3 times a month, when I really want the taste and pleasure of this dark, lithesome brew.

Last week, I think – no, I’m sure – my busy barista at Starbucks forgot that I said DECAF for my tall soy latte (1 shot). I was on such a high all afternoon until I crashed around 3pm. Sound familiar? Plus, by the time I got home, my autoimmune symptoms flared up, i couldn’t walk for a few hours (first time in a long time) and my familiar rib and lower back and hip bone pain was almost unbearable. Autoimmune folks, beware.

So please don’t underestimate that “only 1 cup” of coffee.

Now, does coffee have benefits? Yes.

But should you be drinking coffee? Probably not. Why?

This is where I respectfully differ from what Dr. Mehmet Oz, one of my most respected teachers and health pioneers, supports. He believes it’s ok to have 1-2 cups of coffee a day, and that you’ll benefit from the antioxidants. Is that true? Yes, but only if you’re already super healthy and live in a no-stress world.

Instead, while you probably love the taste of coffee, you’re really using it as a crutch. Especially with my typical clients – either a busy professional and/or someone living with an autoimmune condition – you, like them, are using coffee to prop you up when your adrenals are running on empty.

In this scenario, you’re masking many of the critical signs your body is already sending you, saying it’s time to slow down a bit, reboot, and restore your body, before something bigger crashes.

And if you have an autoimmune condition, these conditions are intricately linked to the adrenals, so anything that upsets them can trigger a cascade of symptoms.

Energy fluctuations, sugar cravings, trouble falling asleep even if you’re tired, anxiety, depression… these are all connected and can be made worse by your addiction to caffeine and other stimulants.

The other main reason to avoid coffee when your system is already compromised is because coffee is naturally highly acidic. The by-products of stress in your body are also highly acidic. What this means is that your body’s pH level skews towards more acidic (vs. alkaline). When your body is too acidic, your immune system becomes compromised and remains open to attack, whether it’s from the latest flu going around, or an autoimmune trigger, or cancer. And this applies whether you’re drinking regular or DECAF coffee. Hence my “uh-oh” in the title here.

So, before you imbibe again, take a whiff and smell the (decaf) coffee. But beware – sometimes even that is too much for some. (Hee hee – have you ever had to RUN to the bathroom even while just brewing coffee… Pavlov’s dogs comes to mind – but that’s a whole other story, that one.)

There are so many other wonderful options to coffee… coming in a future post.