BodyTechnician.com → Caffeine
I've seen a very strong correlation between caffeine use & pain. Caffeine makes every muscle in your body tighter, including the involuntary muscles in the internal organs. If a massage therapy client stops or starts using caffeine, I can feel a difference in their body: more muscle tension with caffeine. Increased muscle tension leads to pain.
Getting off caffeine can reduce your pain, and sometimes eliminates pain. Cutting down from a lot to a little helps, going from a little to nothing helps even more. Many people are sensitive enough to caffeine that a small amount makes a big difference in their pain and tension. Green tea or chocolate are enough to cause pain for many people. The only way to find out what effect caffeine has on you is to stop using it.
AJCN.org WEBMD.com Moderate-to-high coffee consumption (>1 cup/day) increases markers of inflammation. Inflammation causes pain. Inflammation from coffee might cause heart disease.
Coffee, black tea, green tea, chocolate, cola, kombucha, guarana, and yerba mate all have caffeine. Tea contains caffeine and theophylline. Chocolate contains caffeine and theobromine. Cola contains caffeine and theobromine. These are closely related compounds, called methylxanthine alkaloids. They are toxic addictive drugs.
Decaffeinated coffee and tea contain enough caffeine to cause tension and pain. Decaffeinated can be have almost as much caffeine as regular.
A: Not that much.
When I ask massage therapy clients about their caffeine use, many people say: Not that much.
This seems to mean Less than I assume it would take to cause pain.
That's an assumption. Find out what effect caffeine has on your tension and pain. Stop using the drugs for a while.
Even if you only have one cup first thing in the morning, your sleep quality that night is diminished. This is shown by EEG (Electro Encephalo Graph) readings in sleep labs. So you wake feeling less refreshed, and grab a cup. Then you get drowsy in the afternoon from lack of quality sleep the night before, and want another cup. It's a vicious cycle. You're addicted.
Caffeine reduces REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement). This means less dreams, less chance for your deep mind to do emotional processing.
Caffeine reduces or eliminates the deepest sleep, Stage-4 sleep. This means less recovery from physical stress, less benefit from exercise, and less HGH (Human Growth Hormone) release.
Inability to descend fully into deep sleep is associated with Fibromyalgia Syndrome (FMS) and Chronic Fatigue Immune Deficiency Syndrome (CFIDS), two painful conditions.
People who have quit caffeine tell me they have less anxiety, less anger, and feel less stressed. It may take a month or two for this to happen.
Caffeine may produce symptoms essentially indistinguishable from anxiety neurosis.
Patients with symptoms of nervousness, irritability, headache, lethargy, insomnia, irregular heart rates, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea may be treated for anxiety neurosis when the problem could be resolved by restricting caffeine intake.
Journal of the American Medical Association 229(12)1563-1564, September 16, 1974
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Get off caffeine.
Your liver has to detoxify caffeine. That uses resources that your liver could be using to detoxify all the other toxic substances you're exposed to. A single dose of caffeine takes more than 24 hours to be eliminated from your body. Caffeine's half-life is said to be 3-7 hours; in that time, you will have detoxified and eliminated only half of the caffeine.
Why do plants produce caffeine? Because it's toxic. Caffeine poisons the plant's predators.
Pure crystalline caffeine has killed people.
Caffeine use is associated with higher incidence of PMS and FBD (fibrocystic breast disease), two painful conditions. Studies in which women have stayed off coffee for 6 months or more show
improvement of FBD. When women have abstained from caffeine for shorter times, they haven't gotten relief, leading to claims that FBD isn't affected by caffeine. FBD is associated with PMS and
anxiety; conditions that can be caused by caffeine.
Caffeine restriction as initial treatment for breast pain. PubMed
Cyclical mastalgia (breast pain) and caffeine.
PubMed
High caffeine use, benign breast disease; may lead to breast cancer. cebp.aacrjournals.org
Premenstrual syndrome: the caffeine connection
Caffeine causes calcium loss; it increases your risk of osteoporosis. Broken bones are very painful.
Chocolate causes dramatic increases in muscle tension and pain, even though chocolate contains much less caffeine than coffee. Why? Theobromine, an alkaloid in chocolate, is a muscle stimulant.
Chocolate is not an Antidepressant
Much chocolate, and some coffee, is grown in Ivory Coast (West Africa), using child slavery. Chocolate and coffee cause severe pain for slaves: they are beaten routinely.
Caffeine fading
means cutting down coffee intake by ½ cup/day, to avoid withdrawal symptoms. Mix your usual brew with a coffee substitute if you like. Withdrawal may take a week or two. Quitting all at once works better for some people; throw all the caffeine in the trash, there's no more temptation.
Recovery starts after full withdrawal, and takes a month or two. That's when people tell me they feel different; more alert on waking, no energy crash in the afternoon, calmer, clearer, less angry, less anxious. Stay with it.
Tobacco makes smokers half as sensitive to caffeine as they would be otherwise. Smoking seems
calming, since it lessens the stimulating effect of caffeine. If you quit smoking, the same amount of coffee will affect you twice as much as it usually does. Quitting smoking becomes extra difficult; you're suddenly extra wired from the doubled caffeine buzz, on top of the tobacco withdrawal. Then you find yourself wanting a smoke to calm your nerves
.
Solution: To make quitting smoking easier, cut your coffee consumption in half at the same time.
Caffeine may increase the desire for nicotine. BioPsychiatry.com
You may have heard that these plants are sources of antioxidants. That's because they're plants. All plants contain antioxidants. Plants wouldn't survive their encounters with oxygen and sunlight if they didn't create antioxidants. Many common food plants contain powerful antioxidants, without any caffeine. If you want lots of antioxidants, eat a plant-based diet.
Rooibos tea (red bush) from South Africa tastes like black tea. Rooibos is high in polyphenols, antioxidants similar to those found in green tea and black tea. herbalgram.org
Peppermint Tea is high in antioxidants and anticancer substances. Peppermint may help keep you awake. Researchers put people in a darkened room, and monitored their eyes to detect signs of drowsiness. Peppermint oil decreased the tendency to became drowsy.
PubMed
Beverages made from roasted grains, roots, etc mimic coffee's taste and aroma.
DandyBlend is made from roasted dandelion root.
Carob tastes sweet, is used instead of chocolate, contains no caffeine or theobromine.
Nap Break Instead of a Coffee Break apa.org/nap powersleep.org/nap
Massage Therapy for Pain Relief · Berkeley · © Jordan Rothstein CMT