It’s been two or three weeks now since I’ve had coffee. Yes, shocking, isn’t it? Me, of all people, with my deep love of French Press coffee, whole beans mail-ordered from Alaska. Coffee has a down side, though, if you’re one of the unlucky few. And I am one of those few. If you don’t have issues with cholesterol, then feel free to pass this post on by. Otherwise, well, you may need to take a look at your coffee drinking habit, and reconsider a bit.
For some people, cholesterol isn’t controllable by diet alone. My brother falls into that category … not that he’s tried controlling his with diet, mind you, but … well, he’s going to be one of those people, simply because he’s unwilling to change his diet. For me, though, I’ve made the changes. I don’t eat any saturated fats, except for the occasional bit of coconut. I eat a diet high in oat fiber, high in fiber overall, and pretty much vegan. The sole exceptions to that vegan-ness is that I like salmon every now and again, which should actually work in my favor, and that I’ll very rarely have some milk product (more rarely than salmon).
But, I drank coffee. Unfiltered coffee, specifically. If you drink Turkish coffee, French Press coffee, Espresso, or coffee which is “filtered” through one of those Gold filters, then you’re still getting all of the oils. Which are, pretty much, straight saturated fat. The only way you don’t get those oils is if you use paper filters for your coffee.
I switched to tea. After you’ve been on French Press coffee for awhile, filtered coffee is just brown water.
We’ll see where the numbers are in a few months. I’m certainly not at any risk of dying of this or anything, but it’s one of those things like brushing one’s teeth: if you ignore it for long enough, you’ve got issues.
The switch? It takes about two quarts of tea to drive the headaches away, and that’s one in the morning & one in the afternoon. Have I said that I liked coffee? If my 1 mug of coffee was the equivalent to 2 quarts of tea … and then some, ’cause I could skip a day when on coffee. Well, that’s strong coffee. I will miss it.
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Oh I remember the headaches well! I switched our household to decaf without anyone knowing but me, hubby was fine, me screaming headaches! But they do fade fast after a few days 🙂
good luck with the tea thing. it gets better. as does the decaf thing. hang in there.
Who knew? Thanks for the heads up about the bad “C” in the big “C”
Oh, I’m not leaving caffeine. Nope. Just the coffee beans themselves, ’cause the problem is just as bad with decaf as it is with regular.
I gave up coffee about 10 years ago and never looked back. I now drink tea about 4 cups a day. Whilst on the coffee I used to get a sick feeling in my stomach about mid-morning and when I gave it up I had headaches for a couple of weeks. Worth it in the end all the same. Good luck.
I quit drinking coffee on a regular basis many years ago because I was a migraine sufferer (one of the perks of menopause is that my migraines have almost disappeared!). If you drink coffee, the vaffeine in headache medications doesn’t work as well.
I was not a heavy coffee drinker– 2 cups a day at most, but I went through 3 weeks of daily headaches during my withdrawal– tea or no tea! However, I persevered and they went away. Now I am mostly a tea-drinker (grew up with tea, anyway), but can have a nice organic, fair-trade soy cappuccino twice a month or so for a treat with no ill effects.