Do you relate to the saying “add coffee – instant human”? Do you need a coffee before you can  face the day? If so, you are just like millions of other people on this planet. But is caffeine good for you? Well that all depends on how much you consume in a day. Caffeine can be found in coffee beans, cocoa beans (chocolate), tea leaves and guarana. When it comes to coffee, the amount of caffeine depends on the type of bean, brew and the serving size- small, short, long, tall, grande, venti, trenta…… and the list goes on!

From my research, the average cup of coffee has 95mg of caffeine. To put it into perspective, a McDonalds small cup has 109mg, large 180mg. A Starbucks short has 180mg, Grande has 330mg (equivalent to 3 cups of coffee) and Venti 415mg. Tea has considerably less caffeine averaging at 26mg per cup across many types. Decaf tea has 2-5mg of caffeine, herbal teas including peppermint, chamomile and rooibos have 0 mg. Other sources of caffeine are chocolate bars containing 20-60mg, 375ml can of cola has 35-45 mg caffeine and energy drinks 80-300mg. How many coffee/tea/energy drinks you consume per day and the total caffeine content is the important thing to work out, along with how many cups of water you drink to balance out the fluid lost (diuretic effect).

I thought coffee was good for me?

Much research has been done on coffee and the positive health benefits it provides. Apart from the social aspect and relationships built around drinking it, coffee is an antioxidant, improves energy, alertness, concentration, mood, reaction time, can increase metabolic rate, improve physical performance and the list goes on. This is true, but can too much of a good thing be bad? Could your excessive caffeine consumption be dehydrating, a form of false energy in your day, contribute to your anxiety or restlessness, cause sleep disruption, be the factor why you can’t shift weight or are putting on weight?

What happens to the body when you add caffeine?

To put it simply, caffeine sends a message to the pituitary gland, which sends a message to the adrenal glands to make stress hormones (adrenalin/cortisol). This triggers the release of glucose into the blood stream, blood pressure to rise slightly and oxygen levels to the muscles increase. In primitive times you would be set to run for your life from a sabor-tooth tiger (fight or flight response). The problem today is that we too often have no physical response to burn the glucose resulting from our hormone response.

So what happens to the sugar that gets released into the bloodstream?

Insulin, our ‘fat hormone’ is released in response to raising blood sugar levels to remove the sugar from the blood, storing it in the muscles, sending it to the liver for storage or fat conversion.  Blood sugar levels then crash and you feel fatigued and often reach for another cuppa to help you get through the day. This repeated action for a quick pick-me-up can result in a caffeine addiction and as a result elevated stress hormones in the body.

Signs I may be consuming too much caffeine.

If you’ve got any of the following symptoms and you know you’re a big coffee drinker, you can be fairly sure it means your caffeine intake is too high:

• insomnia
• upset stomach and poor digestion
• tired but wired
• irritability
• over-anxious (‘coffee jitters’)
• frequent urination

Caffeine and breastfeeding

I can’t let this topic go by without mentioning this. Being a mother is one of the hardest jobs you can do. Being a sleep deprived mother of a newborn can be the hardest of all. But is coffee/caffeine the answer?  Caffeine passes into breast milk at a rate of about one percent. While this doesn’t seem like much, sensitive babies may respond by being irritable, unable to relax and cry more- a stressful scene for a sleep deprived mum. So while caffeine may seem like the best go to for a pick me up, it may in fact be contributing to you feeling worse as a result of a stressed baby. A vicious cycle really.