04/01/2020
Yesterday, we highlighted ways to reduce your stress and mentioned reducing your caffeine intake. So, we wanted to give a little background on how your stress levels and caffeine intake are correlated. Your healthy adrenal glands are filled with stress-regulating and energy producing hormones (eg. adrenaline, cortisol). With each major event in your life, your adrenal glands are stimulated and you start to use these hormones little by little.
When you’re experiencing added stress at work, caffeine can save the day. Caffeine however, also actively stimulates your adrenal glands to produce more stress regulating hormones. By stimulating your adrenal glands to produce adrenaline, caffeine puts your body in this "fight-or-flight" state, which is useless while you're just sitting at your desk. When this adrenal high wears off later, you feel the drop in terms of fatigue, irritability and headaches. At this rate, instead of 1 cup of coffee, you’ll now need 3 cups to wring out the last few drops of adrenaline/cortisol until you eventually reach “adrenal fatigue”.
We encourage you to check the attached chart for the caffeine content of some favourite drinks and challenge you to take the effort to cut back on your intake. See the list below for some ways to help you out:
• Gradually decrease coffee by 1 cup/day
• Substitute with herbal tea, hot cider, or warm water with lemon
• Ask others to decrease coffee intake with you
• Dilute your regular coffee with hot water
• Drink lattes with more milk than coffee
• Change routines – for example, if you need caffeine in the morning to give you a boost, try a light walk for 20min
• Instead of morning coffee, try this for a spurt of energy: when ending your shower, turn the water as hot as you can stand it for 30 seconds and then 1 minute for as cold as you can.
• Ensure you’re drinking the minimum water requirement for your body
• Keep your caffeine intake to a few hours in the morning so it does not disrupt your sleep cycle
