The beginning of the New Year always brings about people making a clean start to the way they live their lives and many of the goals that people set are around the way they treat themselves mentally and physically. Giving up certain substances, eating better, training regularly; the list goes on and on with the various different ways that those around us will try and improve their lives.
The one thing though that tends to happen, and I’ve been guilty of this myself, is that they just go cold turkey. There’s no build up to that moment and what doesn’t help is the Christmas period tends to bring about over indulgence in the things they want to give up. To me, this is only counter intuitive as you are actually only strengthening the rewards mechanism in your head that this thing is actually good for you so when you drop it, you’ll feel worse than you’ll actually did before and leaves you more likely to go crawling back to “safety blanket”.
The other aspect that goes against people is the fact that, alongside the lack of preparation by gradually building into it, they won’t prepare themselves by looking into what the side effects will be. They may know of all the good that may come of it but not actually know what the downsides will be, which will be what gets them the most and leads them most likely to fail in their pursuit.
One thing that I’ve noticed so many people are reliant on, often sometimes to the detriment of their health through things like lack of sleep, is caffeine. There is no discrimination either on how they consume it, whether this be through tea, coffee, energy drinks, supplements, pills, soft drinks; the list goes on and on!
Caffeine is severely engrained in our society and some people don’t even realise the pure amount of this stuff they are taking in every day and what effects it’s having. On the flip side, there are a few people that I have spoken to are aware how much they do consume and find it somewhat worrying, harbouring a slight want to give it up but are unable to due to this reliance.
This is where I come in to save the day! Recently I’ve conducted a detox and started living life without what you could argue is one of the world’s most used drugs. I thought I’d give you my experiences to not only to allow you to prepare yourself to maybe give it up by show the side effects of giving it up but also the good sides and why you SHOULD give up caffeine!
Firstly, I’ll let you know where I came from when it comes to my intake of caffeine, which has been significant through the years. Whether this is as a teenager and energy drinks most mornings for my paper round and evenings for gaming, to a reliance at university to put in those long hours when I’d left everything to the last minute, to the present day where I got into the mindset that I needed tea prior to training and started delving into big hitting drinks that are for concentration and mental performance but contain a HUGE 150mg per drink!
As much as I was fine with riding the wave of the buzz that’s given to you when taking these in and in some cases the higher productivity levels I was achieving, there were a few things that were giving me red flags that I really didn’t like.
- The first of these was when I wasn’t drinking them, the crash that I was would receive and start of headaches made me feel uneasy about having a reliance.
- The second thing was with some of them, more when it comes to the energy drinks, even though they are given there over exaggerated flavours through sugars and flavourings, it was the chemical aftertaste that made me question: what’s actually going into my system here?
- The final thing was the fact it didn’t agree with my system on the most part. I won’t go into too much detail here but this is mainly in the area of digestion and a feeling of uneasiness as well as feeling a little too wired.
From my personal experience of conducting this, I will talk you through some of the most prominent side effects that I faced, how I tried to combat them and roughly how long they lasted. I have done a little research into this to see how common these were and most articles concurred however, everyone is biologically unique so the effects and time lengths may vary.
Fatigue
The first thing that will most likely happen to you is you’ll suffer from pretty bad fatigue when you drop this caffeine intake that you’ve been relying upon to prop you up. With sleep patterns probably not optimal, out of kilter and taking away this energy boosting (without going through the mechanism of this), you’ll find that you’ll mentally and physically diminish for a certain period of time. The want to sleep or nap will definitely come up during this time, with days being a struggle initially.
All I can recommend for this being able to get past this temporary slump is to make sure that you eat well, stay hydrated and make sure that you get yourself into a better and healthier sleeping pattern. Don’t worry, the tiredness that is brought from this won’t make it too hard as you’ll be wanting to nap a lot of the time, trust me! There’s no harm in this unless you’re affecting getting a well structured sleep pattern by napping for 3 hours and messing up what time you’re going to bed. I know from my experience, it’s not ideal at all!
The sort of time frame for this to settle down for me was around 1-2 weeks, whilst making sure that I was leading a healthy lifestyle with good sleep hygiene, good nutrition and being active with my training. The more of these measures you implement, the shorter this time frame will be but don’t pressure yourself too much to get everything right at once.
Headaches & Brain Fog
Depending on how much caffeine you’ll have been drinking and how long you’ve been drinking it for will determine how bad these are and how long they last for. This is just one of the unfortunate aspects of giving something up. For me, the headaches were pretty tough to deal with due to the level of intake levels I had. Some of them were pretty strong and what came with it was the having “brain fog” where I found it hard to concentrate and think clearly, only further frustrating me and making the headache a little more severe.
This is just something that is going to be part of the process and not really able to avoid apart from making sure you stay hydrated properly, don’t take anything to mask the pain as your body is trying to tell you something and most of all, don’t cave to the urges to go back! For me, this lasted for again, around about a week.
Feel Like Your Ill
Now you may think that I’m crazy for saying this but as with anything that is a drug, there’s a chance you’ll become ill one way or another. You see it with people who are dependent on alcohol or hardcore drugs but this was something I suffered with. When I went cold turkey, I honestly had flu like symptoms for a few days whilst my body adjusted to the change that I’d made. Again, this is something you can only endure until it subsides, which as I say, should only be a few days before you’re feeling all good again.
Better Sleep
Sleep. That weird and wonderful thing that people always try and put off and make up for it with other substances when actually, there are so many health benefits to sleeping properly that are well documented. Giving up caffeine can really do wonders for your ability to sleep properly, whether this is feeling more refreshed in the morning due to better quality or for some, actually getting to sleep in the first place!
This may be something that many people don’t know or realise but caffeine stays in your system for quite awhile though it may not feel like it as that buzz wears off. The half life (the time it takes for half of the substance to get out of your system) is actually between 3 to 7 hours, depending on your system. This means that the medium cappuccino coffee you had at Costa, containing a crazy 185mg, at 1pm could still leave (in the best case scenario) 40mg in your system at 7pm. That’s the equivalent to a fresh cup of tea! That’s not going to do your sleep any good!
The time taken to feel this benefit was once I’d got past the fatigue part of the side effects, so around a week, and started feeling a lot more energetic in the mornings, as well as your physical and mental health improving gradually.
Energy Levels
I found that once I got past the first week or two, my energy levels were a lot better overall, which in turn helped other avenues of my life, giving me an upward spiral of positivity. This meant that I was training better in the daytime, stay focused on the work that I had and everything didn’t seem like too much of a drag. This included the things that I didn’t really want to do!
I put this down to a mixture of things. Firstly it would be down to being able to sleep better making sure that I was refreshed more mentally and physically and secondly, getting past the brain fog allowed me to feel like I could function better on the tasks I had. The other thing I really liked about this form of energy was that it was natural and not coming from a chemical influence on my mind and body.
No Reliance
This is the thing that I think I uncovered to be the worst thing about all of this; the pure reliance on this drug! I realised myself that often to conduct a task I would have psyche myself to do it but this wasn’t just limited to me. Far too many times I have found that people rely on a coffee or a tea to be able to do X, Y or Z. How many times have you heard or used phrases like one of the following:
- “I’ll do this once I just get a coffee”
- “Can you ask me in a second? I can’t function without my morning coffee”
- “Before we do this, do you want drink/tea?”
People don’t really notice it but there is a serious reliance on caffeine within the society that we live in. It has become apparent to me far too often that I and other people rely upon a drink helping them to focus better and stimulate themselves mentally to be able to do a task that they aren’t motivated for.
Now I do acknowledge that caffeine does help with that kick you need to do something but it’s the reliance that’s worrying. It programmes them to have a feeling that they need something to do a task or give them the mental clarity required. Once you’ve gotten out of the habit of this, you won’t feel like you need a cue just to be able to do a task and not only removes that barrier of “I can’t do this because I’m without my coffee” but saves you that time, though minimal of preparing said drink.
More Money
Finally, the thing that a lot of people may focus on when it comes to the benefits of going caffeine free is the extra money that will end up in your pocket. Whether this be from buying your coffee beans, your tea bags, your multipacks of energy drinks or your daily purchase from your favourite coffee stop, ditching these drinks will save you a surprising amount of money each week/month/year if you trade them for water or other cheaper alternatives.
Caffeine Substitutes
Like those have coping mechanisms for giving up other substances that they take, such as drugs or nicotine with smoking, there are things you can drink to help you slowly transition off your drinks and potentially act as somewhat of a placebo. As tea drinker, I’ll list some of the drinks that have helped me through going caffeine but still give me the taste and feeling of a hot drink. One thing to be careful of is not to just jump into your usual brand of tea’s decaf version, some of them have a very distinct taste difference.
Disclaimer: I am in no way paid to advertise these brands, they are just what I've found to suit my taste buds. My drink of choice prior was PG Tips Gold, without milk or sugar. This should give you an indication of what brands you may enjoy. For me, the decaf PG Tips jus didn't hit the spot.
- Water – This is a big one! Drink more water! I don’t really need to tell you about the health benefits of drinking more water, they should be obvious. Having a higher level of hydrating will help a lot of the side effects as well.
- Twinings decaf green tea – Tastes like green tea but has the caffeine removed from it. I’ve no issue with the taste of it and tend to enjoy it whilst unwinding before bed.
- Twinings decaf English Breakfast – If a black tea is to your taste, this is the best tasting decaf tea that I’ve found that would quench my thirst for it whilst still ensuring I was without caffeine.
- Rooibos tea – A naturally caffeine free tea that has a taste somewhat similar to that of your standard black teas but is slightly different and somewhat lighter and refreshing.
That wraps up this blog and I hope that you found the information included both informative and inspiring for you to make the move to a healthy way of living that’s less reliant on outside substances to get the most out of life. The aim is for us to improve our wellbeing bit by bit so that we can all live the best and most fulfilling lives as possible. If you don’t already, be sure to check out the social media links that are below and follow me on my various pages. This will allow you to be one of the first to hear about my new blog posts when they are released on a weekly basis. Of course, if you think someone else would benefit from this be sure to share it with them!
