Why I’m Kicking the Coffee Habit

 

According to USA today, about 83 percent of Americans adults drink coffee. With many of them drinking coffee every day. This was something I used to do, but I think drinking coffee has more negative effects than it does positive ones.

For me personally, drinking coffee everyday would make my legs cramp up -sometimes to the point where I couldn’t get up. Not only that, but every once it a while it would mess up my digestive system and I know my not the only one who has this side effect because it’s been known to make you poop more often. It also worsened my menstrual cramps. Even just by drinking coffee every once in while, instead of everyday dropped my period from five days to three. The cramping isn’t completely gone, but I would say it’s a lot better than it was before. Running is less of a challenge now too, I used to get stomach cramps all the time when I ran and now I only get them if I don’t take the time to digest.

I think there is only one thing this bitter beverage is good for: it’s keeping us awake. Coffee can, “[have] effects lasting up to six hours.” Which for someone who gets up early and has to work for long periods of time, this seems like a good idea. However, chemicals in your brain will fight against it. As AsapScience shows, adenosine is a chemical in your brain that makes you feel tired. If coffee is consumed, the caffeine (recent researched has debated that it could be a different component, but that’s a different topic) in it will start to compete with adenosine. Making you feel more awake as opposed to feeling tired. After a long period of time, your brain with create more adenosine receptors, therefore you would need more coffee to feel awake.

So really you can’t benefit too much from it, after a while creating a feeling of wakefulness will be a tug of war game between your brain and the drink.

You might have headaches after withdrawing from it, but I believe that in the end it’s worth it. After drinking less coffee I feel psychically and mentally healthier.