Diet and Nutrition, HEALING US, Hyperactivity

Coffee Illusions: What The Magic Brew Does To Your Brain

No Comments 07 October 2011

coffee illusions

Coffee Illusions:

What the Magic Brew Does to Your Brain

 

 Nathan Batalion, Global Health Activist, Healingtalks Editor

With an intro from You Are Not So Smart. 

(Healingtalks)  Hmmm…………….Misconception: Coffee stimulates you. Truth: You become addicted to caffeine quickly, and soon are drinking coffee to cure withdrawal more than the stimulation.

That can’t be true…Get-off… What’s better than a warm cup of coffee with delicious cream, topped with a frothy head and  made sweet to the T. Further you smell it brewing and feel cozy inside as you browse cakes and brownies, scones and biscotti.

You get some of it in you, and you feel ALIVE again – you feel SUPERHUMAN.

Suddenly, you can’t keep up with your own mind as geometric symbols float over the magazine articles in your lap. Someone strikes up a conversation about health car…or whatever… and suddenly everything you’ve ever heard about the topic is at the tip of your tongue.

Damn…Jeez… coffee is AWESOME!

Coffee Illusions

You want to live a life of illusions, knock yourself dead. Want to live a life of integral health, let’s first understand something about illusions….especially  GREAT FEELING  “illusions.”

Think of a mirror – a thin surface appearance in our overall consciousness. No depth.

Think of a small timer – one that goes off and on for no more than so many minutes – or illusion timewise is temporary, lacking time-depth ….

( As an aside, pharmaceuticals work pretty much the very exact same way. They fool us into thinking they a the best means to heal. No way. There is a whole system of medicine is based on this belief, this illusions and they fiercely claim the mantle of  exact science” – depth truth. But in reality, they are best for just symptom modulation, suppression of symptoms especially pain (mirror surface conditions)…and for emergencies (think again  a smaller timer) or the surface of time. They belong likewise to any illusionary root worldview (no one every told you this?) that designs all chemicals and pollutes our earth and as much our bodies – the 17th century math-based/mechanical vision that has brought us to where we are after an industrial revolution- a world full of weather crises, the breakdown of social/financial structures, our earth’s ecology, our inner polluted ecology or health pandemics and cancer, etc)

Ok that’s too much to digest. So now back to the much, smaller but nevertheless all-too-wonderful-to- talk about topic of COFFEE…..!

Bottom line with all illusions….you guessed it…there is a let-down. They ain’t completely what they claim to be.

Once you’ve been drinking coffee for a while, the feeling after a cup isn’t the difference between the normal you and the super you, it’s the difference between the addict before and the fix after \

Ok, this is a very simplified explanation:

Caffeine’s Effects

Caffeine is an adenosine antagonist. This means it prevents adenosine from doing its job. Your brain is filled with keys which fit specific keyholes. Adenosine is one of those keys, but caffeine can fit in the same keyhole. When caffeine gets in there, it keeps adenosine from getting in. Adenosine does a lot of stuff all throughout your body, but the most noticeable job it has is to suppress your nervous system. With caffeine stuck in the keyhole, adenosine can’t calm you down. It can’t make you drowsy. It can’t get you to shut up. That crazy wired feeling you get when you drink a lot of coffee is what it feels like when your brain can’t turn itself off. To compensate, your brain creates a ton of new receptor sites. The plan is to have more keyholes than false keys.

Caffeine Crash and Pickup

Thus you become very sensitive to adenosine, and without coffee you get overwhelmed by its effects. After eight hours of sleep, you wake up with a head swimming with adenosine. You feel like shit until you get that black gold in you to clean out those receptor sites. That perk you feel isn’t adding anything substantial to you – it’s bringing you back to just above zero.

In addition, coffee stimulates your adrenal glands, which makes you feel like you could take a bullet and eat glass. When the adrenaline runs dry, you feel like you’ve been running a marathon, which leads you to look for more coffee to get those glands pumping again. After a few rides on the adrenal roller-coaster, you CRASH!

Getting Addicted to Caffeine Lift

You might think all of this probably takes a while, but it takes about seven days to become addicted to caffeine. Once addicted, you need more and more coffee to get buzzed as your brain gets covered in receptor sites. Neurologists report seeing patients regularly who drink two or three pots of coffee in one sitting before starting their day.

Coffee also releases dopamine, the feel-good chemical in the brain which is released when you have an orgasm, win the lottery and shoot heroin. A similar addiction cycle with dopamine leads to depression and fatigue when you aren’t hitting the beans.

Finally, caffeine takes about six hours to leave your system. So if you drink coffee six hours or less before going to bed, you won’t reach deep sleep as often. This means you wake up less rested, and need more coffee. If you’ve been drinking coffee for a while, you aren’t getting nearly as much out of it as you did in the beginning. You are just curing an addiction.

Caffeine Bottom Line

“The take home is that regular use of caffeine produces no benefit to alertness, energy, or function. Regular caffeine users are simply staving off caffeine withdrawal with every dose – using caffeine just to return them to their baseline. This makes caffeine a net negative  for  alertness, or neutral at best if use is regular enough to avoid any withdrawal.”

- Neurologist Stephen Novella from his blog, Neurologica

Mind you, this is not a dependency. You will experience withdrawal symptoms upon coffee cessation, but not like with amphetamines and cocaine. Coffee doesn’t seem to affect the dopaminergic structures related to reward, but before you breathe a sigh of relief, ask yourself how long you’ve been drinking it. Try and stop for two weeks and see how hard it is.

A cup or three will still give you pep, but as with all stimulants, over time you need more and more to reach that golden hum. Don’t freak out, 90 percent of Americans are just like you.

My Favorite Alternatives to Coffee

Want to really boost your health, get high on health, a sustained high…and in a different way.. if  I can you dare to be so counter-cultural…and with only a slight, not big time up and down stimulation, then try the following. Oh if this doesn’t fully turn you on, play some hip hop or your favorite high-beat music early in the morning to get you revved up and then sluggalug…

  • Grapefruit Juice, freshly squeezed. No it doesn’t have that seductive taste of coffee but in the morning it will extend the detoxification process of sleep, stimulate a stronger bowel movement, add vitamin C and anti-oxidants to your blood stream for steady energy – what you really need.
  • Wheat Grass Juice, freshly squeezed – This takes a lot more effort to get, grow and juice fresh wheatgrass – but boy is it worth it. This is  for the serious health lover as well as those challenged with a major chronic condition. It contains over a 100 essential nutrients, unlike the emptiness of a cup of coffee,  and may be the single most powerful blood cleanser on the planet. Before a road race or other sports event, its just fabulous. This  because it adds tons of oxygen to you blood. It gives more than just energy but steady power.
  • Fruit and Protein Smoothie – The benefit of a smoothie is that you can add a large variety of nutrients to your morning routine, and you can vary that routine easily. Try mango and peach one morning with a protein powder, and another with bananas and sunflower seeds. Try this 2-3 times a week. The potential varieties for this are endless. Compare having a creative smoothie to the same boring cup of coffee everyday (with pasteurized cream and refined sugar, also not so healthy). Yes  and again it takes a little effort, some creativity, and being wide-eyed in the morning….but again its worth it.
  • Herbal Tea – Alternatively try your favorite herbal tea, but with little or less of a  caffeine spike. Maybe add a little kambucha with spirulina and you will still get a BUZZ.

Coffee Illusions knock yourself dead

And for many more coffee alternatives, knock yourself DEAD…

Keywords: drinking coffee, research about coffee, is coffee healthy, health effects of coffee

The following  MUST SEE video discusses more aspects of the Coffee rollercoaster, the acidic nature of coffee and much more!  Its called Quit Coffee Painlessly

Children Behavioral Problems, Diet and Nutrition, HEALING US, Hyperactivity

F.D.A. Panel to Consider Warnings for Artificial Food Colorings

No Comments 07 April 2011

F.D.A. Panel

to Consider

Warnings for

Artificial Food Colorings

By GARDINER HARRIS

WASHINGTON — After staunchly defending the safety of artificial food colorings, the federal government is for the first time publicly reassessing whether foods like Jell-O, Lucky Charms cereal and Minute Maid Lemonade should carry warnings that the bright artificial food colorings in them worsen behavior problems like hyperactivity in some children.

The Food and Drug Administration concluded long ago that there was no definitive link between the food colorings and behavior or health problems, and the agency is unlikely to change its mind any time soon. But on Wednesday and Thursday, the F.D.A. will ask a panel of experts to review the evidence and advise on possible policy changes, which could include warning labels on food.

Growing List of Studies Links Artificial Food Colorings to Behavioral Problems in Children

The hearings signal that the growing list of studies suggesting a link between artificial colorings and behavioral changes in children has at least gotten regulators’ attention — and, for consumer advocates, that in itself is a victory.

In a concluding report, staff scientists from the F.D.A. wrote that while typical children might be unaffected by the dyes, those with behavioral disorders might have their conditions “exacerbated by exposure to a number of substances in food, including, but not limited to, synthetic color additives.”

Renee Shutters, a mother of two from Jamestown, N.Y., said in a telephone interview on Tuesday that two years ago, her son Trenton, then 5, was having serious behavioral problems at school until she eliminated artificial food colorings from his diet. “I know for sure I found the root cause of this one because you can turn it on and off like a switch,” Ms. Shutters said.

But Dr. Lawrence Diller, a behavioral pediatrician in Walnut Creek, Calif., said evidence that diet plays a significant role in most childhood behavioral disorders was minimal to nonexistent. “These are urban legends that won’t die,” Dr. Diller said.

There is no debate about the safety of natural food colorings, and manufacturers have long defended the safety of artificial ones as well. In a statement, the Grocery Manufacturers Association said, “All of the major safety bodies globally have reviewed the available science and have determined that there is no demonstrable link between artificial food colors and hyperactivity among children.”

Petition by Center for Science in the Public Interest

In a 2008 petition filed with federal food regulators, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group, argued that some parents of susceptible children do not know that their children are at risk and so “the appropriate public health approach is to remove those dangerous and unnecessary substances from the food supply.”

History of Problems with Artificial Food Dyes

The federal government has been cracking down on artificial food dyes for more than a century in part because some early ones were not only toxic but were also sometimes used to mask filth or rot. In 1950, many children became ill after eating Halloween candy containing Orange No. 1 dye, and the F.D.A. banned it after more rigorous testing suggested that it was toxic. In 1976, the agency banned Red No. 2 because it was suspected to be carcinogenic. It was then replaced by Red No. 40.

Many of the artificial colorings used today were approved by the F.D.A. in 1931, including Blue No. 1, Yellow No. 5 and Red No. 3. Artificial dyes were developed — just as aspirin was — from coal tar, but are now made from petroleum products.

In the 1970s, Dr. Benjamin Feingold, a pediatric allergist from California, had success treating the symptoms of hyperactivity in some children by prescribing a diet that, among other things, eliminated artificial colorings. And some studies, including one published in The Lancet medical journal in 2007, have found that artificial food colorings might lead to behavioral changes even in typical children.

The consumer science group asked the government to ban the food dyes, or at least require manufacturers to include prominent warnings that “artificial colorings in this food cause hyperactivity and behavioral problems in some children.”

Citizen petitions are routinely dismissed by the F.D.A. without much comment. Not this time. Still, the agency is not asking the experts to consider a ban during their two-day meeting, and agency scientists in lengthy analyses expressed skepticism about the scientific merits of the Lancet study and others suggesting any definitive link between food dyes and behavioral issues. Importantly, the research offers almost no clue about the relative risks of individual food dyes, making specific regulatory actions against, say, Green No. 3 or Yellow No. 6 almost impossible.

The F.D.A. scientists suggested that problems associated with artificial coloring might be akin to a peanut allergy, or “a unique intolerance to these substances and not to any inherent neurotoxic properties” of the dyes themselves. As it does for peanuts and other foods that can cause reactions, the F.D.A. already requires manufacturers to disclose on food labels the presence of artificial colorings.

A spokeswoman for General Mills refused to comment. Valerie Moens, a spokeswoman for Kraft Foods Inc., wrote in an e-mail that all of the food colors the company used were approved and clearly labeled, but that the company was expanding its “portfolio to include products without added food colors,” like Kool-Aid Invisible, Capri Sun juices and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Organic White Cheddar.

The panel will almost certainly ask that more research on the subject be conducted, but such calls are routinely ignored. Research on pediatric behaviors can be difficult and expensive to conduct since it often involves regular and subjective assessments of children by parents and teachers who should be kept in the dark about the specifics of the test. And since the patents on the dyes expired long ago, manufacturers have little incentive to finance such research themselves.

Popular Foods with Artificial Colorings

Popular foods that have artificial food dyes include Cheetos snacks, Froot Loops cereal, Pop-Tarts and Hostess Twinkies, according to an extensive listing in the consumer advocacy group’s petition. Some grocery chains, including Whole Foods Market and Trader Joe’s, refuse to sell foods with artificial coloring.

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COMMENT: I   grew up with my parents running a grocery store and thus I had unlimited access to. It colored jelly beans, M & Ms, licorice and you name it was a child’s heaven. But the time I was eleven my health started to falter, as with a bout of hepatitis. My liver  had been overwhelmed with poisons. The doctors, living firmly in the grips of chemical paradigms, blamed it on something else.

In our healingtalks blog and the pages of raw-wisdom.com, we have long argued that all synthetic chemicals in our foods should be eliminated or severely restricted because the root principles of chemistry (an arrogant and misguided mathematical/mechanical reorganization of nature) actually goes against our essence, our life force and our essential consciousness. You can  search for many unique articles on the flaws of Sir Isaac Newton’s powerful math-based vision of nature. This is a philosophical argument and it does not take billions of dollars research, ever biased  by industry profit motives, to clearly demonstrate.

This is why it is critical to go organic in our whole food chain and overall lifestyles. We would love to receive your comments and experiences as well.


Remembering Melinda Elliot

Nathan Batalion
Certified Traditional Naturopath




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