The Skinny on Coffee

I love coffee.  I love the taste of coffee.  I love the smell of coffee.  I love the memories of coffee, like the one where my dad is pouring me out a cup at 5 am from his thermos on a road trip along the dramatic California coastline.  Coffee is opaque liquid love.  Its memories warm us.  Its heat consoles our loneliness, like a late-night cup in Ed Hopper's Nighthawks.

Coffee is riddled with memories.  Seeing my mother enjoy a delicious cup of hot coffee was one of my greatest pleasures.  My cousin's wedding held in a San Diego harbor was celebrated at a restaurant that served a deep, rich coffee.  The coffee was perhaps my greatest memory of his wedding; that and the actual church ceremony.  Coffee is so good and consumed in such delicious company that the cups themselves become discussion on coffee.  When was the last time that you were in a diner, enjoying coffee from a thick mug or fine china?

Or when a friend or family member wants to make an impression and serves coffee in decorative china?

 

Coffee occupies such an integral part in most cultures.  In our teenage years, we were instructed how to ask a girl out on a date--ask them if they'd like to go out for a cup of coffee.  Coffee was neutral that way; it was our wing man, that dark beverage behind which two strangers could be protected.

It would be nice to drink fine brewed coffee, organic coffee that I roast in my own home in a frying pan on the stove.  The coffee that I drink is NesCafe instant and Whole Foods instant.  James Wesley Rawles, who used to own and operate a coffee bar, states that most store-bought instant coffee is stale before it is vacuum-sealed that results in a tasteless beverage.  Another reason that I drank coffee, even endure the tastelessness of instant coffee, was because I love cream in my coffee.  No sugar.  I would not put sugar in my coffee; the cream was enough to enhance the flavor. 

But I write today on coffee because I may have to limit my intake.  Finding a recent post on coffee's effects on hydrochloric acid made me realize that my excessive consumption of it is harming the health benefits of the stomach acids.  Shannon Marks over at Livestrong.com reviews the health benefits of coffee and caffeine.  Citing naturopathic doctor Julia Gonen, Marks reports that "coffee can injure intestinal tissue by speeding up the process of gastric emptying, which can cause contents of the stomach that are highly acidic to dump into the small intestine too rapidly."  Caffeinated coffee has been implicated in malabsorption conditions, says Stephen Cherniske, a nutritional biochemist and author of Caffeine Blues: Wake Up to the Hidden Dangers of America’s Number 1 Drug.

These images of coffee and caffeine wreaking havoc inside our gut goes counter to our images of a cowboy being refreshed on an open plain at dawn or a patient being revived by the stimulate after days or weeks of illness or a friend being comforted by a hot cup of joe.  But we've also lost sight maybe of the prevalence of coffee.  There are Starbucks on every corner, coffee that comes in every size and every flavor imaginable and even in ones that we can't.  Coffee shops are the new, or is it the old, local watering hole.  So people attend them even though they're getting a cookie or a milk shake.  The pressure to drink coffee is immense; to resist is futile.  Then there is all the talk about anti-oxidants.  Well, there are anti-oxidants in life, in chocolate, in sugar, somewhere, in some amount, I am sure.  It may be true that coffee has anti-oxidants.  But that point is often used to justify its consumption, not necessary to treat a condition.  We take Vitamin C or Vitamin D3 to overcome a cold or a flu; coffee is not that kind of an anti-oxidant.  So although the claims that the anti-oxidants in coffee can fight cancer, perhaps, but not in the doses that you would find in a cup of hot joe.  In the last couple of years, McDonald's, the hamburger joint, has marshaled rave reviews of their Arabica bean coffee.  And it's true--their coffee is good.  Ultimately, we have to pay attention to its health effects.  Claims about the benefits of coffee will persist and they will be true.  But you've got to take personal stock.  What is that coffee doing to you?

It's the destruction of the intestinal chemical and structural composition that have me concerned.  Now, coffee is not the only culprit or perhaps the most wicked of them by itself.  But if you're a coffee lover, like myself, you might point to the fact that coffee, as much as you don't want to point the finger at such a trusted companion, is not all that good for digestion.  For comfort, yes; for reviving wonderful memories with those we love, absolutely.  But the fact is that coffee does deplete important hydrochloric acid that is so important at keeping our guts running healthy.  One can take supplements to rebuild the depleted hydrochloric acid.  But at what point does someone stop relying on enzymatic supplements to provide the digestive juices that coffee purportedly has robbed us of?  And what is so bad, honestly, about losing a little digestive juices to a great tasting cup of joe?

What happens when hydrochloric acid is depleted?

This author, Stephen Stiteler, L.Ac., O.M.D., goes even further to blacken coffee.  This statement was disconcerting, "Caffeine forces the liver to release glycogen (sugar) into the blood stream.  The pancreas responds to the sudden increase in blood sugar by releasing insulin, the hormone which causes excess carbohydrates to be stored as fat.  Within the span of an hour or so, the result is a sharp drop in blood sugar.  This creates a condition known as hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar.  That's when another cup of coffee seems like a good idea and the cycle repeats itself."  I wonder if heavy coffee drinkers end up with diabetic symptoms after so many years and so many cups?  

 I like Sally Fallon, so I googled her name and coffee.  And she concludes that coffee exhausts the adrenal glands.  How much coffee exhausts the adrenals, at what time coffee is drank actually exhausts the adrenals, and what type of coffee exhausts the adrenals, she did not say.  Her comment, which I greatly appreciate is here:  "Caffeine jolts the adrenal glands and eventually leads to adrenal exhaustion.  My own health did not begin to improve until I quit coffee–the hardest thing I ever did."

In her review of Kristina Amelong's book Ten Days to Optimal Health, Fallon advocates Amelong's findings that ". . . caffeine, alcohol, refined sugar, and artificial sweeteners contribute to chronic disease, citing a study in the Journal of Natural Medicine which found that one teaspoon of refined sugar paralyzes fifty percent of the body's white blood cells for five hours."  50% is stunning.  I didn't realize that sugar consumption was so bad.  I guess that the sugar industry's assault on corn syrup have helped to legitimize sugar as the healthy sweetener.  Paralyzing 50% of our immune system does not seem healthy.

More on coffee here, here, and here.

COFFEE AND TOOTH HEALTH

It's true, too, that coffee stains your teeth.  More than that, coffee contains oxalic acid, which promotes tooth decay, according to Rami Nagel.

IS COFFEE A DIURETIC?  IN MOST CASES, YES.

This is an interesting fact on coffee.  We tend to think of coffee as a diuretic, which it is, and that as a diuretic it will help to eliminate food.  What it can do to a bowel stool is that it can dry it out because the coffee leaches out fluids from your body.  eHow has this to say, "Since coffee also works as a diuretic, which essentially means that it can remove some liquid from the body, it can leach liquid from a stool and further dry out it out, making it even more difficult to pass. So if you are constipated, drinking coffee could ultimately worsen the condition."  The article is here.