I am QUITTING COFFEE for 100 days

[Giraffe]

I don't have any issues with falling asleep but it's more that my sleep is super fragmented. I wake up and twist and turn all night and wake up feeling unrefreshed, tired and bleh.

Just a couple of thoughts... I don't know if you have tried it already. I don't remember if I have suggested it to you before ... I apologize if I have.

- When you wake up at night have a little snack (some carbs with a bit of salt or since milks seems to agree with you drink a little bit of milk with added salt).
- Normally I do not feel any benefit from taking niacinamide orally. One notable exception was during a very stressful time, after weeks of unrefreshing sleep. I tried it could feel the relaxation immediately. The next morning I felt refreshed when I woke up.
- I more or less fixed very stubborn digestive issues with vitamin B5. (related thread)

 

[Jennifer]

You left us on a cliffhanger @Jennifer... how did you manage to clear up the SIBO that returned with a vengeance after stopping Minocycline??? I know you've already shared a lot on the forum about how thyroid supplementation helped you, was that the key to finally getting rid of it?

I have not had any good experiences with antibiotics. In fact I had nice skin up until I took antibiotics (doxycycline, penicillin VK I believe) for other health issues in my teen years. Since then my skin has been "messed up" so to speak... of course it could have been something else that coincided with taking the antibiotics but my gut instinct (pun intended) is that antibiotics did something bad with my gut microbiome. And I don't know but antibiotics sort of feels like a "band-aid" solution since it stops working the minute you stop the antibiotics, and then skin issues come back even worse IME.

Thanks as always for your input Jennifer. Your posts always bring insightful perspectives, personally I think you should be elected into the RPF hall of fame

Aww…thank you, Korven. I appreciate that. Unless it’s a life or death situation, I won’t take antibiotics again so I feel similarly. :) I go into more detail on the protocol I did to eliminate the overgrowth in the link down below but essentially, I started on thyroid supplementation, took a few antimicrobial herbal formulas, and consumed a low fiber and low starch diet of glycine-rich animal protein, natural simple sugars and a small amount of saturated fat —at the time, I had gallbladder disease so I couldn’t tolerate much fat. Knowing what I know now, I believe I could have eliminated the SIBO fasting on raw skimmed goat’s milk. Without fiber or the bulking nature of milk, I don’t think my peristalsis would have been strong enough to have regular eliminations without NDT. I did the protocol for around 3 months, then slowly reintroduced dairy and it has comprised the majority of my diet for the past 3 years, which is kind of wild because after 6+ months of taking Minocycline, my symptoms to dairy had become so severe that I experienced anaphylaxis within minutes of consuming any.

How To Strenghten Stomach Lining? Or What Is Going On? Irritants Create Pimples On Face In Minutes

Thanks for the great pointers everyone! @Vinny actually I remember now doxy did something to my skin. Some darker pimples that were there for months suddenly shed a layer of skin and were a little lighter underneath. I don‘t know how it hurt my teeth exactly I just know it binds to calcium. I...

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[Apple]

Alright, I am resurrecting this thread.

As evident by the lack of activity here, I did NOT make it 100 days without coffee. I really wish I had stuck with that promise to myself, because then I would know what it feels like to be free of all mind-altering substances. Now I just have 100 more days of being caffeinated... damnit.

I tried no coffee for several month.
Definitely it works, calmer mind , less allergies, smoother joints, less neck pain, better eyesight, better sleep, easier wakeup.
But everything else is bad .
Skin sags, possibly heart valves work less efficiently , kidneys are less protected against stones, digestion is worse, less creativity, just feel dumber, muscles restore too slow after training, cafeine protects skin against sun radiation

 

[aniciete]

Alright, I am resurrecting this thread.

As evident by the lack of activity here, I did NOT make it 100 days without coffee. I really wish I had stuck with that promise to myself, because then I would know what it feels like to be free of all mind-altering substances. Now I just have 100 more days of being caffeinated... damnit.

I managed maybe 2 weeks decaf and then I got sucked back into coffee drinking culture... COFFEE IS EVERYWHERE!!! It wasn't even that difficult for me to quit, but I find that staying decaf in an environment where EVERYONE drinks coffee to be extremely difficult.

So... why am I giving this another go?

I still don't sleep well and I can't help but feel that I am going around in circles in life due to poor quality sleep. My sleep is not great, and that means my immune system is probably not functioning optimally and I still get sick pretty often, and I don't recover well from exercise so I can't get a "natural high" from working out (have to substitute with more coffee instead), and I have constant tension in my back, neck and shoulders, and so on and so forth. See the list of problems in my first post. I am pretty sure I have a stress problem and coffee is not helping.

I really, REALLY, need to fix my sleep. And the only thing I haven't really tried is cutting out coffee for an extended period of time. I am so addicted to this stuff I feel embarrassed to even talk about it. I don't drink alcohol, I don't smoke weed, no nicotine, I don't do any drugs. Coffee has been *is my drug of choice and I think that why my brain has such a hard time letting it go, it is my go-to substance whenever I feel tired, bored, depressed, sick, have work to do, etc. My brain keeps me telling me, how will you manage without coffee? How will you perform at work, be social, be funny, be creative, be a productive citizen?

Lastly, I still have rosacea. I get random flare-ups of red patches and pustules in my face, it is destroying my self-confidence, puts me in a bad mood, and is driving me nuts trying to figure it out. Truthfully I don't know if coffee is the culprit here but again I wouldn't know because I have been drinking coffee my entire life.

Ok wish me luck, I will have to taper down again because I am drinking way too much... AGAIN. In 1 week I should be good to go decaf again. I will have 1 week where I go on holiday in a warm climate so that should be a good time to quit.

I hopped back on the coffee train the last month and my sleep has been in the dumps. Wake up in the middle of the night every night and everything becomes inflamed. Nagging headaches and facial redness too.

Not sure if it’s directly the coffee or coffees effect on my sleep but I’m definitely stopping again. My sleep was flawless with no coffee, no starch and no dairy.

 

[Santosh]

I hopped back on the coffee train the last month and my sleep has been in the dumps. Wake up in the middle of the night every night and everything becomes inflamed. Nagging headaches and facial redness too.

Not sure if it’s directly the coffee or coffees effect on my sleep but I’m definitely stopping again. My sleep was flawless with no coffee, no starch and no dairy.

If you need to stop coffee, starches and dairy to feel ok, there is something wrong with your liver and bile production, maybe even candida overgrowth in the gut.

Drink coffee
Take raw garlic with every meal
Perform a liver flush once every two weeks
Flush your gut regularly with epsom salts

 

[Jonk]

I hopped back on the coffee train the last month and my sleep has been in the dumps. Wake up in the middle of the night every night and everything becomes inflamed. Nagging headaches and facial redness too.

Not sure if it’s directly the coffee or coffees effect on my sleep but I’m definitely stopping again. My sleep was flawless with no coffee, no starch and no dairy.

I'm just spitballing here but maybe it's salt related. I heard that 4 cups of coffee equals 1 teaspoon extra loss of salt through the urine. One thing about hypothyroidism is a chronic loss of sodium. From an RP article:

"The increase of adrenalin caused by salt restriction has many harmful effects, including insomnia. Many old people have noticed that a low sodium diet disturbs their sleep, and that eating their usual amount of salt restores their ability to sleep. The activity of the sympathetic nervous system increases with aging, so salt restriction is exacerbating one of the basic problems of aging. Chronically increased activity of the sympathetic (adrenergic) nervous system contributes to capillary leakage, insulin resistance (with increased free fatty acids in the blood), and degenerative changes in the brain (Griffith and Sutin, 1996)."

Salt, energy, metabolic rate, and longevity

Despite numerous publications showing that diuretics could cause the edematous problems that they were supposed to remedy, they have been one of the most profitable types of drug. Dietary salt restriction has become a cultural cliche, largely as a consequence of the belief that sodium...

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