Coffee addiction
I love coffee. I really do. But, unfortunately for me, I don’t drink it anymore.
When I did drink it, though, it was a time of a day just for me. A moment for me and coffee. I sat happily relaxed, eating some cookie or even bigger sweets, sipping quickly while the mug was hot and reading news or watching movies from YouTube.
However, due to my heart condition (I have arrhythmia), my doctor ordered me to live more healthy (sports and such) and stop drinking coffee and alcohol.
I’m sure I wasn’t abusing the latter, but coffee? I drank two mugs a day, sometimes even more.
A little background on me: I’m a student, I’m often exhausted from different activities at my university that are 12 hours long, parties with friends and the lack of sleep.
I sometimes woke up, ate breakfast and went to sleep again because I was too tired to be able to do anything.
Sometimes after eating lunch I had to take a nap, because my body wanted to sleep! So that’s how I started drinking second coffee in the afternoon or after lunch.
It helped for a little bit, but then I started again taking afternoon naps.
Until… I was forced to stop drinking coffee. Now I’m feeling better in the mornings, I started paying closer attention at early 8AM lectures, I don’t even take an afternoon nap anymore! With the same amount of sleep (circa 6hrs daily… I know, it’s killing me slowly), I feel better without coffee.
Why?
I think the reason is simple. Morning or afternoon coffee was making me asleep.
How so?
Because of sugar. I was eating a lot of it (in cake form) when drinking coffee. Do you know how your body knows it’s time to sleep? Because the level of glucose in your blood increases, sending a signal “stop everything and start consuming food” to the brain.
What instead?
I have to drink something… So I started drinking mineral water and my favorite tea: green tee!
I always liked it for being sparser and lighter than coffee, while still keeping me up in the morning.
One can say: Tea contains caffeine! It’s almost like drinking coffee!
No, not really. Studies show that green tea has about 4-7 times less caffeine than coffee.
And I’m drinking poor quality green tea, so it may have even less caffeine. But I like it, I won’t switch. Until the next appointment with my doctor…