Caffeine

Last week I was watching a show called "The Doctors." It is a daytime show with a panel of four doctors that discuss relevant health issues. The Ob/Gyn on this show did a small segment about a woman's caffeine habit and its effects on her mood and her hormones. She advised her, and all women, to cut back on their caffeine intake. She mentioned how it can cause anxiety, mood swings, hormonal imbalance, and more. It also puts your brain in a constant state of fight or flight, and you will eventually get adrenal fatigue. However, she said that have one cup of coffee a day is not harmful.

This is inaccurate. But before you say "Why would you know better than a doctor?" let me say that doctors receive about 6 hours of nutrition education before becoming an MD. Also, the Medical Model of Care focuses primary on treating a patient with drugs and interventions, NOT on educating the patient to be proactive in their own health and preventative medicine.

Studies have shown that women with PMS and other mood or hormone disorders who cut back on caffeine but didn't eliminate it made NO improvement. However, women who eliminated caffeine altogether (this included coffee, tea, chocolate . .) made drastic improvements. Even decaf coffee and tea have trace amounts of caffeine that can disrupt hormonal balance. Read the information below for more about caffeine's effect on women's health.

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Women share unique physiological processes and lifecycle transitions related to their hormonal systems and physical bodies. Women suffer from many of the same diseases as men, and some conditions, like cardiovascular disease, affect women at high rates with devastating consequences. But many health challenges are faced only by women. Some of these have to do with sexual organs and hormonal systems, others center on the processes of mothering, menstruation and menopause. In regards to caffeine and coffee drinking, caffeine affects women differently. Women not only have a greater sensitivity to caffeine than men, but they also may take much longer to detoxify caffeine and recover from its stimulating effects. It is suggested that caffeine’s influence on a variety of conditions in a women’s body may be due to its demonstrated effect on the body’s sex hormones. One of the actions of caffeine is that it causes increases in estrones, or female hormones, while it decreases available testosterone.

Go to http://www.teeccino.com/women.aspx to read an in-depth study on Caffeine and Women's Health.