From audio journal episode: AJE-2010-01-30-11-05.
I wanted to talk today about green tea and caffeine a little. You know, the last couple months, ever since I purchased this Mr. Coffee coffee machine, and then consumed copious amounts of coffee through the holidays, I often got headaches. Even if I kept drinking the stuff daily, not allowing my body to begin the painful caffeine withdrawal process, I still got the head pains. I’ve found also that when I don’t drink coffee, the headaches go away. Now it takes several days for all the effects of the caffeine to disappear, once consumption of it stops. But in my case, they do stop. Indeed, there have been months-long stretches over the years where I’ve not consumed java, and in those times, I practically never got headaches.
It’s not just coffee either that affects me so. Indeed, any beverage or food item containing caffeine makes me feel bad after a few days of consuming it. Unfortunately, this includes green tea; my favorite appetite suppressant that I’ve relied upon through many diets to help keep my food cravings at bay. Now ten years ago when I brewed several cups of green tea per day while dieting, I never thought that it would trigger the same sorts of headaches that coffee does. Indeed, the amount of caffeine in green tea feels to be less per cup than coffee. But green tea appears to cause the head to hurt as well; particularly on days that I skip having it. In fact, earlier this week, I experienced lots of headaches. Then on Tuesday, I suspended green tea consumption. Though the headaches persisted another two and a half days, eventually, they went away and today, I really feel fine; just as I did when I wasn’t drinking caffeinated liquids.
So this may be a key to assuring that I’m living up to my fullest potential: Avoid caffeinated foods and drinks, because the symptoms impair my abilities to concentrate, and the headaches irritate and make me irritable, and they’re just no fun to carry around for days on end. Based on this latest find, it appears that to avoid the headaches, I must severely limit how much green tea I take in on a day. I’m even afraid to drink the decaffeinated versions of either coffee or green tea, because I get headaches from them too.
I know that lots of people have no problems with caffeine and these drinks. But unfortunately, it appears that I do, and if I’m drinking a whole lot of the tea, I wake up the next morning not only with a headache, but I feel nauseous; a sort of tea hang-over. Thus, I really should avoid these products and find other ways to curb my appetite. Indeed, I’ve read that caffeine can increase the sensation of hunger, making overeating all that much more enticing and irresistible.
I’ve also read that green tea is what they call a thermogenic, which means that it does rev up the body’s metabolism through the stimulation of heat production within the body, and that this is why it triggers weight loss, since it kindles the body to burn up more calories per hour. But I’m wondering if this action occurs due to the caffeine in the tea? Without the caffeine, would the tea still function as an effective thermogenic? I don’t know, nor do I care to run any further tests on myself.
I still have lots of green tea here. So perhaps I’ll just drink one cup per day until I use it all up. Then the rest of the day, I’ll drink the naturally caffeine-free teas such as the spearmint, peppermint, chamomile and other herbal concoctions. These teas never give me headaches, and I’ve consumed five to seven cups of them per day without headaches in the past. They’re just as effect-neutral as water, and so I think I could drink ten cups per day without ill effects. They seem to diminish how good I feel, except that they force me to visit the restroom more often. J
While green tea does encourage greater weight loss for me, I have to cut way back on it and then, cut it out once I exhaust my supplies of it here. I’ll make the necessary adjustments to enhance my work energies. In fact, even without the tea, I still feel energized. If I find something to do that I’m impassioned to complete, I feel just as invigorated without the tea as with it. Plus, without caffeine, I don’t get that madly-scurrying-about, spinning-wheel feeling that I experience when I’ve ingested too much caffeine. You know that feeling where you have all kinds of energy, but you don’t gain any traction. So you accomplish little because it’s hard to stay focused on one task for very long. Let’s see. Let me do this. Then, let me do that. Then let me come back to this, and so on. I’m jittering and bouncing around when I have too much caffeine; that natural speed, and I end up getting less done because the subsequent headaches slow me down much more than that initial rush speeds me up.
Now caffeine can indeed wake me up the morning after a restless night. For the short-term, it works great. But it makes directing and focusing that energy harder. This is the downside of caffeine. True, I’ve sung the praises of green tea over the years. But now, this downside of it I must acknowledge as well, and come up with a less painful way to help me keep the scale moving in the downward direction.
Take care.
Tom Hesley
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But one of these new years, the New Years resolution I make every year to swear off of all refined carbs just may take hold, like when I gave up snuff in 1986 and when I totally eliminated all alcohol consumption in 2004. We’ll see.