Caffeine Addiction

Do you realize that caffeine addiction may well result from the ongoing love affair between Americans and one of the country's most popular legal drugs?

Coffee, soft drinks, headache pills... you'd be stunned if you realized how much caffeine ends up in your body over the course of a year.

What is this potent legal drug that so many people rely on to wake them up in the morning as well as to keep them awake during the rest of the day?

Well, from Wikipedia, we learn...

Caffeine... is a xanthine alkaloid found naturally in such foods as coffee beans, tea, kola nuts, Yerba mate, guarana berries, and (in small amounts) cacao beans.

For the plant, caffeine acts as a natural pesticide since it paralyzes and kills some of the insects that attempt to feed on the plant.

Caffeine's main pharmacological properties include a stimulant action on the central nervous system with psychotropic effects and stimulation of respiration, a stimulation of the heart rate, and a mild diuretic effect.

Does this sound like a substance you want to put in your body on a regular basis?

It it does, please think again.

According to Stephen Chernisek, author of Caffeine Blues, caffeine in the human body...

1. Raises blood sugar levels and disrupts sugar-regulating effect of insulin
   
   
2. Raises fatty acid levels in the blood
   
   
3. Raises homocysteine levels, which greatly increases the diabetic's risk for cardiovascular disease
   
   
4. Causes vascular resistance (circulation is reduced)
   
   
5. And caffeine raises stress hormone levels which is a primary risk factor for diabetes

And if that's not enough to get you started on breaking your caffeine addiction, Wikipedia's article on caffeinism reveals that...

Caffeinism is poisoning resulting from excessive intake of caffeine, whether via coffee, tea, chocolate, soft drinks, over-the-counter medications, or other caffeine-containing products.

Its symptoms are both physiological and psychological. The amount of caffeine needed to generate caffeinism depends on individual sensitivity.

It is commonly assumed that only a small proportion of people exposed to caffeine develop symptoms of caffeinism. However, because it mimics recognized psychiatric disorders, such as anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and psychosis, a growing number of medical professionals believe caffeinism victims are routinely misdiagnosed and unnecessarily medicated.

A study in the British Journal of Addiction declared that "although infrequently diagnosed, caffeinism is thought to afflict as many as one person in ten of the population." (JE James and KP Stirling, 1983).

Shannon et al (1998) point out that: "Caffeine-induced psychosis, whether it be delirium, manic depression, schizophrenia, or merely an anxiety syndrome, in most cases will be hard to differentiate from other organic or non-organic psychoses... The treatment for caffeine-induced psychosis is to withhold further caffeine."

The fact that caffeine is known to exacerbate organic mental illnesses (Hughes et al, 1998) can make accurate diagnosis difficult.

Personally, I overcame my caffeine addiction back in 1993 when I got serious about my health. At the time, I lived in New Orleans and on most work days drank up to seven cups of black coffee with chicory, a rabid concoction that wired me up so tight with phony "caffeine energy" that I'd often experience body tremors and shaking hands by the time I knocked off from work.

When I started studying natural health and learned about caffeine addiction, I decided to get that monkey off my back for good.

I won't go into the nasty details because my experience getting off caffeine was awful, but I will say it took me three days of pounding headaches, night and day sweats, upset stomach, and a number of other unpleasant withdrawal symptoms and behaviors (talk about grouchy) before I was free of my caffeine addiction.

Seriously, one of the best things you can do for your health is to decrease or, even better, totally remove, caffeine from your life.

Once you get past the withdrawal problems, you'll be amazed at how much better you feel physically and mentally.

Chet Day
Editor, The Health Circus
http://chetday.com