Caffeine and
Coffee: Potential Elixirs of Health:
As I wrote in a
recent newsletter about recovering normal cortisol levels during the day,
coffee is failing
this young woman because. Her problem is that she has high
nighttime cortisol and too little cortisol left for the
stresses of her day. For her, coffee is not the fix for her
daytime fatigue. In
the newsletter, I explain the likely
solution for her and many others like her.
I want to emphasize here, though, that as long people use
coffee properly, I emphatically support them
using it. My reason is that science backs my belief that
properly-prepared coffee is, as I suggested above, a virtual elixir-of-health.
While helping us in many other ways, coffee can be a remedy
to start the day with a burst of mental energy.
When I intentionally stoke up my
mental powers with coffee, I do it knowing that science backs my choice of
coffee (and even caffeine in tablet form) as a valuable part of my
supplemental health regimen.
I hastily add, though: it is
proper preparation that makes coffee most wholesome,
nourishing, and healthful. Here's how Tammy and I prepare it
for maximum benefit:
We grind organic
coffee beans just before brewing the coffee. We use coffee
beans because in pre-ground coffee, too many of the fatty acids are likely to be rancid;
ingesting the rancid fatty acids can set off free-radical reactions that
can harm us in many ways. After brewing the coffee, we
drink it within 20 minutes or so. After that time,
the antioxidant power of fresh-brewed coffee rapidly
diminishes.
Despite our wanting to get more from
grinding organic coffee beans,
drinking pre-ground,
non-organic coffee has some of the same immediate benefits
of our ground-before-cooking organic coffee beans: it warms the body, increases one's sense of energy,
and sharpens the mind. These benefits are well documented
scientifically.
For me, however,
taking the time to grind
organic coffee beans is well worth it. The
practice provides long-range benefits that pre-ground,
non-organic coffee just don't provide.
More about the
health benefits caffeine and coffee |
