Coffee, at least to me, is a very personal thing.  Do you drink coffee? I do too.  In fact I love coffee. I am a little particular though about how my coffee is made.  I usually mix the regular with something like Hazelnut or French Vanilla. If I go in a restaurant and don't like their coffee, I'll ask for cinnamon or almost any similar spice; barring that, chocolate. I've read conflicting arguments about coffee and I'm sure you have as well.  So, should we drink coffee or not?  The best thing I can say is to listen to your body.   When I first wake up in the morning, there had better be coffee in the house! In fact, there had better be my blend in the house.  I feel like I have a hangover in the morning (I've always been glad that I never drink, similar I’d hate to see what the combination would be like!) I'm so bad that if I have company over, I bring the coffee pot, cup, spoon, sugar, half-and-half or cream in my bedroom the night before. I keep the cream cold with ice. If I'm at someone else's house, I've been known to do the same thing.  Now that's bad!  My kids learned early on not to talk to me about anything, other than “good morning”.  After my first cup, I'm ok and realize that I'm on planet earth. After the second cup, I realize that I'm a human being and to get going, got things to do. I was so bad for years that I drank coffee all day, which isn't necessary for any of us to do.  It also interfered with taking my vitamins and herbs.  So, finally, I decided to drink no more than 4 cups of coffee in the morning and by 10 am be all done. Within a half hour, I drink 20 ounces of water to flush the excess caffeine out of my system.  In another ½ hour, another 20 ounces of water.  At that point, I start taking half of my vitamins.  I take a lot, so I divide them up as swallowing pills isn't my thing. I take my vitamins with water.  About 4 or 5 hours later, I take the rest of my vitamins.  Another 3 to 4 hours after that I take my herbal extracts. 

The reason why I stop drinking coffee and flush it out is of course to get rid of the caffeine and also because the caffeine will destroy any and all of the vitamins and herbs ingested.  Caffeine is caffeine; whether we get it in coffee or soda or some other way. It does the same damage. Decaffeinated anything is even worse for us.  I know that many of you are saying that the means by which the coffee is decaffeinated is better and not so dangerous.  Really?  Stop and think about this a minute: Most of our coffee comes from other countries; the method now used to decaffeinate coffee is through water.  What are the warnings that we constantly get regarding drinking water in foreign countries?  Much of the water is contaminated, even here in the U.S.  So, not only are we drinking coffee that may or may not be good for us, we are compounding the problem by decaffeinating our coffee and tea.

 My personal feeling and I'm sure there are those who will disagree, is either drink coffee or don't. Drink regular tea or don't. But don't drink decaffeinated beverages. If you can't drink regular coffee or tea, then don't.  Your body doesn't really need it anyway.  Flush your system with water and you will soon notice that you don't need that cup of joe anyway. 

 I'll be posting another blog on herbs that contain caffeine in another day or so.