Day 11 - Promised the caffiene talk

Weight 133 lbs.
Food - Eliminator Juice (Beet, carrot, lettuce, ginger, cucumber), grilled chicken thighs, big salad,  Erin's veggie spaghetti (I made this up but it was pretty good.  See recipe below)
caffeine - no
sugar - no

Erin's Veggie Spaghetti

1    zuchini thinly sliced in long thin pieces the width of spaghetti, I made mine short but they could be long

1/2 cooked spaghetti squash

4 sliced mushrooms

Thinly sliced red onion, not that much

Diced garlic clove

Baby spinach

Organic Tomato Sauce

Basically I just fried all thee veggies in butter.  Started with the garlic and the onion, then put    in zucchini for a minute then put in mushrooms then topped with spinach - just lightly sauteed the whole thing until it was cooked but not limp.  Reheated my spaghetti squash in the microwave and heated my sauce.  Layered it on plate like this - spaghetti squash on the bottom, then sauteed veggies next, then topped it with sauce.  Would be good with goat cheese sprinkled over all that if you want.

I really loved it.

***

Caffeine

I promised I’d talk about this and the news isn’t really great, to be honest.  Besides the fact that I just CANNOT spell the word - cafiene caffiene  cafeine   (oh whatever!) -  I’m still drinking it, you see.  I’m at about 1/3 of my previous rate of intake at this point – but I’m still drinking it.  I have to admit it gives me a nice buzz for a few hours.  Anyhow, I am going to type in what my two main sources say about it and please don’t dismiss them out of hand or freak out.  That disclaimer I just made is because some of you will just decide they are crazy for being so against caffeine – others will become afraid of the air you breathe if you read this stuff – and I especially mean Brenda Watson’s book.  She’s a bit of a panic monger if you ask me.  She really comes down hard on our toxic environments and while I do agree that our environments do have many toxic components, I also know that the balance of chemicals in the living world has always been a shuffling game – as in, living things are always shuffling the things they want near them in and the things they want away out – even our own excrement would be toxic if we lived in it.  So anyway, just know that it’s all part of the game of being alive.  Don’t freak out just listen to the info and decide if it’s a problem for you or not.  If you know you are sensitive to caffeine and you also know you are a tiny person (for example) then maybe you ought to restrict your intake more than a big person who doesn’t notice anything when they drink it – I don’t really know – but certainly I am sensitive to it and I like the way I am sensitive to it – it makes me feel happy.  But probably I ought to go off it for the following reasons… here goes:

Coffee and tea (even decaffeinated) have a negative effect on your adrenal glands.  They put a strain on your immune system during a time when you want to give it all the support you can.  If you must have some coffee, have it on an empty stomach (away from food) otherwise it will acidify everything it is taken with.  The “civilized” after lunch or dinner coffee is one of the worst things you can do after eating.  Herbal tea is fine anytime! Natalie Rose Detox 4 Women p 62

I just want to note that black tea is just as much an herb and ginger is… and ginger is pretty stimulating too.  I’m not arguing with her but I would like to see the biochemistry of caffeine in the body and I’d also like to understand why decaff is still a problem.  I guess I’m probably going to listen anyway, because I know it effects me and my anti-cystitis diet is NOT supposed to include caffeine but I really do want to see the proof. She doesn’t even explain what she means about the immune system and I wonder about it’s impact on hormones. Cause this is what Brenda Watson says:

What Qualifies as a Toxin

But I also want to point out another dimension to this definition that’s frequently overlooked.  Substances you wouldn’t normally view as “toxic” or “poisonous” are indeed members of this category.  These include pharmaceutical drugs, caffeine, and alcohol.  The number of people who died in 2001 as a result of conditions brought on inadvertently by either medical treatment or diagnostic procedures was greater than the number of those who died in that same year of either heart disease or cancer, the number on and two leading causes of death in the US respectively. Brenda Watson Detox Strategy p 25

 

And

Have you had your first cup of coffee yet?  Or maybe you prefer the buzz from a diet soda, again loaded with chemicals and artificial sweeteners.  While caffeine does afford people some benefits, including a temporary boost of energy, too much can result in a cycle of highs and lows that can ultimately wreak havoc on steady levels of energy-promoting and detoxing hormones.  Additionally, caffeine can increase the rate at which you lose nutrients, which can aggravate your condition by taking away your body's supply of the very nutrients it needs for proper detoxification.  Brenda Watson Detox Strategy p 189

Here's my thought on coffee and tea...  I do know some ways to get around the issues they have brought up.  First, there is a site you can buy a cold brewing coffee maker.  I have tried it (thanks to Mike Detwiler) and it is quite good coffee.  The cold brewing of coffee makes it acid free.  My guess is that decaffeinated organic cold brew would be pretty okay for your health and I find it gives you that warm cozy breakfast feeling too.  It is organic, low acid and mostly caffeine (did I spell that right finally?) free.  (It's the dang e before i - pain in my butt)

Anyway, another comment goes with my above comment - foods in general must all have varying impacts in the body - this semester I'm planning to learn some about that in school - but it just seems to me that tea is an herb whether it's caffeine free or not and that all herbs are probably doing something to us.  Garlic, mint, ginger, cinnamon, basil, oregano, licorice root, chamomile ... surely they all do something.  So I'd hazard a guess that in moderation black tea and organic coffee is probably just fine and that acid free organic coffee is even better than fine!

A site on cold brewing: http://www.ineedcoffee.com/06/cold-brewed/


A site to buy the hour glass cold brewer:  http://www.hourglasscoffee.com/ 
 
Here's how I make it at home.  I use my french press.  I fill the base with about a half cup of grinds and then add room temp water to the press with the grounds just floating in it.  I wait 12 hours.  Then I strain the grinds and poor the rich dark liquid out.  When I make a cup of coffee I put about 1 /4 cup of the dark liquid in the bottom of my coffee cup (perhaps even less) and then add boiling water to it.  It tastes great to me and does not aggravate my medical condition.