My Love Affair With Joe

Here I sit, the victim of yet another involuntary 7:30 a.m. wake-up call. Which in and of itself wouldn't be so awful if I had actually gone to sleep at midnight when I got in bed, not screwed around on social media until I wasn't-so-sleepy at one-thirty in the morning. Regardless, that was my choice then, and this is my reality now, so what on earth do I do with my racing brain that simply won't turn off once it gets flipped on? Since all this funny business started, my flares are getting worse and ability to cope is degrading...

I absolutely suck at meditating. Although I know full well the mind is a muscle and exercising it into relaxation is both important and takes practice, I haven't jumped on the bandwagon yet. What I am doing, however, is looking at my coffee consumption. My relationship with coffee is a dependent and joyful attachment, but we have a bit of a history. I had to give up coffee entirely when I was first sick with CFS/ME. Since the caffeine's stimulation of my adrenal gland destroyed my fragile grasps of energy, it had to go. Once I got my virus managed and went back to work, coffee became a necessary way to get through the day again. We quickly fell back in love and have remained so ever since.

When I got on my clean eating kick what I put in my coffee changed, but I alternative-health researched until I felt confident the benefits of consuming the controversial brew outweighed the risk. Phew! I woulda probably stayed on this train forever if a lady I work with hadn't told me about Dr. Perricone and his belief that the oils in coffee store caffeine in the cells which when built up over a lifetime, contribute significantly to middle-aged insomnia. Of course I ignored her, until this latest round of unexplainable sleeplessness reared its ugly head. I researched her claim, but Google couldn't find anything about it using the search terms I entered. It was just more stuff about inflammation and cortisol, which I am already well versed in.

But I am far more willing to turn to my lifestyle when problems with my health arise than rely on the limited ignorance of conventional medicine (i.e. the drug trail to side-effect city), so I decided to give this green tea thing a whirl. Yesterday was my first day. I brewed one tiny little leveled-off spoonful of coffee beans (as opposed to two heaping) with a bag of coconut chai green tea in my French press. I still added my stevia, teaspoon of raw sugar, coconut oil and dash of half and half, and it was delicious. Around mid-afternoon I may have encountered a bit of the "afternoon slump," but it was nothing to stop me in my tracks. I'll have to wait and see if this makes a difference before deciding to do away with the small amount of coffee I still add, but figured this is a good place to start. Baby steps got me here, and baby steps will keep me going until I find a way to live successfully with this illness.

Thanks for joining,

Leah

#sleep #insomnia #coffee #chronicillness #fibromyalgia