☕ Coffee: Slay or Nay?

A guide to coffee for your best life

🌱💬 Herb.Chat is a monthly herby/foody/flowery advice column (sometimes written, sometimes video, sometimes audio) for paid subscribers of The Dirt newsletter.

Paid subscribers are welcome to leave comments at the bottom and 🌈 submit your anonymous questions for future months.

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You've Entered the {🌱💬 Herb.}Chat.

☕ coffeeluv3r4life:

Q: If coffee were a person, would it be my bestie, my enemy, or my frenemy? Should I break up with coffee? What are the benefits of a taking a coffee hiatus? How do I wean off coffee without the hangover? What can I sub my morning brew for?

🌱herb.chat:

First off, just like all other plants, you can’t categorize coffee as good or bad.

Whether coffee feels health supportive or not is relative and based on the individual.

Differences in our liver enzymes, our kidney health, our hormonal balance, our stress resilience, and our constitutions all factor into our relationship with and reaction to consuming coffee.

🦸🏾‍♀️ Coffee as The Hero: an example

Coffee contains two types of fiber - arabinogalactan and galactomannan. These fibers are easily broken down by bacteria in the human intestines, resulting in the production of short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) and an increase in the levels of Bacteroides/Prevotella bacteria. In mice, a study found that coffee boosts the growth of helpful Bifidobacteria and prevents the growth of harmful E. coli and Clostridium bacteria. Similarly, a clinical trial involving 16 healthy adults showed that when they drank three cups of coffee every day for three weeks, the levels of Bifidobacterium in their bodies (and, in some cases, metabolic activity) increased significantly.

🦹🏻‍♂️ Coffee as The Villain: an example

On the flip-side, for someone with autoimmune disease, coffee may not be well-tolerated because of the complicated and highly individualized way that coffee interacts with our immune systems. There’s research to suggest that in some folks with genetic predispositions, coffee could increase risk of certain autoimmune diseases - this article by Dr. Sarah Ballantyne goes into a more nuanced and in-depth take on this whole topic if you fancy.

All that to say - whether coffee is the little angel 😇 or the little devil 👹 on your shoulder is all very dependent on you - your body, your genetics, your lifestyle.

Let’s Get to Know Coffee, or Coffea arabica ☕✨

Coffee is an extract from berries of the coffee plant. Throughout its history, it has been used to increase energy and, among the Eclectic herbalists, it was used for nervous depression with dull thoughts and constipation, and was typically administered as a beverage, 1-2 cups per day.

Coffee is a nervine stimulant, which is what gives it that naturally energizing effect.

A nervine is a general term used to describe plants that act on the nervous system.

The word nervine is often used to describe plants that have calming effects on the nervous system, but there are actually several different types of nervine plant qualities, each with very different impacts on the nervous system.

Plants with nervine stimulant qualities, like coffee, actually have a stimulatory effect on the nervous system via exciting nerve centers.

A couple examples of other plants with nervine stimulant qualities are Tea (Camillea sinensis), and Yerba Mate (Ilex paraguensis).

Though plants with nervine stimulant qualities can have beneficial physiological effects, the way that many of us consume them (regularly and/or in large quantities) can contribute to over-excitation of the nervous system, leading to experiences of anxiety or nervousness.

Coffee is also a natural diuretic (increases urination), which means that energetically, it can be drying to the system. This also means that it increases the elimination of electrolytes like magnesium, potassium and sodium from your body (which is why chronic coffee drinkers sometimes deal with magnesium or other mineral deficiencies).

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Figuring out if coffee is friend or foe - let’s look at the facts:

Assessing if you have an issue with coffee ☕😞

Here’s a checklist to help you decide.

If this sounds like you, you may want or need to alter your relationship with coffee for a period of time, or even take a full on coffee sabbatical: