About 4 months ago, I quit drinking coffee
I believe it's already almost 5 months by now, but the essence of the review is the same, so that's just a minor detail. I wrote this post at the time and I guess now it's time to review the situation. Has it truly helped me from my migraines and other inconveniences?
In my world, there was only room for the perfect coffee
For as long as I can remember, I've been drinking coffee that's a bit stronger than regular coffee. Those old-fashioned coffee machines that you see in those American diners on tv, that's exactly the coffee I would never drink anymore, I just don't think filter coffee is any good. We all have our own preferences of course, and if there was one thing that I found important in my day, it was starting the day with a GOOD cup of coffee. For many years, I've believed that my day started shitty if I didn't have the right ingredients for my perfect cup of coffee. When I could not drink coffee to start my day, I often also experienced that things didn't go smoothly, I forgot things, left the house without my keys, or stuff like that.
Migraines and other headaches
Unfortunately, at some point, I started to notice the relation between headaches (that often turned into migraines) and coffee intake. Of course, I already knew that there's a relation to these things, as well as we all know that alcohol isn't good for you either. But I believe coffee is considered one of the lesser evil, and at least very socially accepted addictions out there while it truly is poison to your body. I have always ignored this message honestly, as well as I ignored the "smoking is bad for your advice" for many years as well. Luckily, I already quit smoking two years ago. I always thought that that addiction was the biggest one to overcome (at the time) until I discovered what the caffeine intake was doing to my body when I actually started to pay attention to the signs.
I knew I needed some caffeine detox
To get rid of the migraines as they kept coming and often lasted longer each time as well. I started with taking less caffeine, as I sometimes had 4 coffee a day, I narrowed it down to 3, 2, and later 1 max. When for some reason I managed to have a day without any coffee, I noticed that the headache following after a day like this was even 100x worse! I started to see the pattern here, and sometimes I could not function for a day or even 1,5 days when this happened. Just cutting down on the caffeine for a day / 2 days a week wasn't going to be helpful at all if that meant that I would be out of the running for a few other days that week.
At that time I started to realize how bad caffeine can be for your body, and even mental health! I've dealt with bad headaches and migraines for many years, to be honest, but never did it occur to me that this could be caused by my coffee intake. I knew that after quitting smoking 2 years ago, this was the next thing I would have to face, and it needed to be done as soon as possible. No delays! These headaches needed to go.
I decided to quit drinking coffee completely
Rather than to not do it several days of the week, I didn't want these "withdrawal symptoms" anymore, these were far worse than the normal headaches due to too much caffeine. I had to quit. For at least a month, I didn't drink any coffee, not even the very light variant of iced coffee you find in supermarkets. I was totally done with it for a while. After at least 2 weeks, the headaches disappeared. Finally. What a relief!
Pregnant
Halfway through September, I discovered being pregnant and I soon noticed that I felt so much better and had less nausea compared to other pregnancies. I have never experienced NOT being above the toilet from the very first week after discovering that I was pregnant. I know that once a pregnancy stops being vital, this could be caused by that, but in this case, even the weeks that I was still carrying an embryo with a heartbeat, I didn't feel nausea at all. I truly think not drinking any coffee was helping with that. I can't think of any other reason now that I know how toxic caffeine can be.
Unfortunately, the pregnancy turned into a miscarriage, and I'd been first waiting for weeks before the miscarriage started, which turned into quite a traumatizing experience in the end. I have felt weak for weeks (physically), and to be honest, I'm very happy that I wasn't also dealing with headaches due to drinking / or not drinking coffee those weeks because the headaches from the miscarriage were already horrible without those.
I now drink iced coffee instead of normal coffee
Those iced coffees from the supermarket have never given me withdrawal symptoms, they don't even come close to the dark roasted coffees I was drinking anyway, so that makes total sense. I don't drink more than 1 a day from these, so that helps as well, but it's hard for a former coffee lover and addict like myself to refrain totally from drinking anything that has caffeine in it. And no, switching to tea is not an option, I've always hated tea, whenever trying it, it's just "not my cup of tea".
I've tried drinking decaf once now
Although it has been on my list for a while to see if decaf is an option for me, to at least give me the idea that I'm drinking coffee. I only tried it once. We were ordering from Starbucks and there was this lunch package deal that contained a coffee as well. There was an option to pick iced coffee and then decaf. This was a good moment to see what I thought about that. The verdict was that I didn't hate it, but I also didn't love it. It's possible that I just didn't like this particular one because I've noticed before when ordering from Starbucks, that it's just not the same as my own good old cup of coffee. You'd think this coffee from a chain like Starbucks would be 100x better, but I differ to disagree there, even with the regular coffee. So, soon I will have another attempt trying decaf (at home) to see if I can/should replace my iced coffees with (iced) decaf. I just really want to know / experience how my body responds to the options and which one is good to consider.
If you're considering quitting drinking caffeine, go for it!
As the biggest coffee addict out there didn't think I could ever pull this off! But honestly, if I can do it, so can you! If you have considered cutting down on the caffeine of quitting, make it happen. Just learn from my mistake where I thought I should skip drinking it one or two days a week, because you will most likely experience the same withdrawal symptoms which will even wreck you more than the actual headaches that made you cut down on the caffeine in the first place.
One last thing to consider: mental health
I don't know about you, but looking at myself, having constant (and very bad) headaches, meant that I wasn't a very nice person part of the day. I could snap easily because I just could not tolerate certain sounds that triggered the headache to get worse. Lights are an issue as well in these cases. If the headache was at the point where I should have gone to bed in a room without lights, but could not do so because of the situation, I could truly snap out on my boyfriend so easily. This of course, sometimes led to arguments (especially when I didn't mention the headache yet), which isn't helping feeling like an emotionally stable person. Mental health matters, and if there are things you can do to help yourself feel balanced and emotionally stable by cutting down on certain food intakes, you should truly consider doing so.
Your body will be thankful, I'm sure!
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