By Pat Klein, Yoga+

Coffee is the hot beverage of choice in Europe, the Americas, and the Arabic world, with tea occupying that position in Britain, China, and India. In Arabia, the oily coffee berries were used as a medicine and fermented to make wine almost 2,000 years ago. There are many legends about how the stimulating properties of coffee came to be recognized. One legend traces coffee’s first use as a beverage back to an Arabian monastery, where sometime around the 10th century a monk noticed a small herd of goats cavorting all night after eating berries from the coffee plants that grew wild in the vicinity. The monks brewed a concoction of the berries in hot water and found it helped them stay awake for their nightly prayers.

The practice of roasting the beans originated in Syria in the 13th century. Coffee arrived in Paris in 1643, and by 1675 the city had more than 250 coffee houses. By the 18th century the coffee bush had reached Brazil, which now produces more coffee than the rest of the world combined. Since then, coffee has become the national drink in many countries. It has been estimated that 25 percent of all adults in the United States consume more than five cups of coffee every day. They drink four times more coffee than beer, three times more than soft drinks, and millions of gallons more than milk.

Is this healthy? Countless studies have been done, yet medical science has come up with little that would persuade people of the need to find an alternative to coffee. Some studies suggest a possible relationship between coffee and pancreatic diseases such as cancer, though this is actively debated. Others suggest a mild aggravating effect on hypertension and irregularities in heart rhythm. Many people who drink coffee recognize that it irritates their stomach, and studies have shown that its tannic acid content interferes with iron absorption and aggravates iron-deficiency anemia. The same is true of black tea. Medical research has also focused on the link between coffee consumption and PMS, fibrocystic breast disease, insomnia and other sleep disorders, and decreased rates of calcium absorption, although none of the findings are conclusive.

But the upshot is that the evidence is not compelling enough to spark a massive retreat from a beverage that has become an integral part of the daily routine in many households. The reasons people drink coffee are many and often firmly held. Besides finding pleasure in the aroma and flavor, many of us sip it as part of a comforting ritual, accompanied by a newspaper in the morning or a chat with a companion later in the day. Some also find that it acts as a morning laxative. But probably the most universal reason for drinking coffee is that it gets us going first thing in the morning and keeps us going later in the day when our energy begins to flag. It banishes sluggishness after a meal or in the evening hours at the end of a hard day.

Why Not Quit?
Even without the support of highly publicized, conclusive studies, experienced medical practitioners, especially those who take a holistic approach, know that there are many medical problems and symptoms that may be aggravated by caffeine and that a trial period of several weeks without the stuff might well be warranted to see if symptoms subside. Hypertension, irregularities in heart rhythm, sleep disorders, anxiety, panic attacks, irritable bowel syndrome, and migraine and tension headaches might abate if people reduced or even eliminated their coffee intake. Even people with chronic musculosketetal pain syndrome — in the form of head-aches, low back pain, joint pain, and so forth — paradoxically often find relief when they avoid caffeine, which is sometimes used in pain medications prescribed for those very symptoms.

Another reason for eliminating caffeine is that doing so will reduce our stress and toll it takes on our lives. We all know that adrenaline is one of the key hormones responsible for the body’s stress response. Caffeine is essentially an adrenaline equivalent — it acts in the body to block the enzyme responsible for deactivating adrenaline’s effects, thus accentuating and prolonging the action of circulating adrenaline. Avoiding coffee and other beverages that contain caffeine is a biochemical means of reducing your internal stress level.

For those interested in yoga, there is another reason to find substitutes for dietary stimulants — the challenge of tapping into the vast energies that lie within rather than depending on a drug. Overcoming periodic dips in energy through exercise, relaxation, postures, breathing practices, and meditation will revitalize and replenish the body. Caffeine only depletes the body further by masking the symptoms of fatigue and thereby sustaining a pace that the body and mind are protesting against. Lack of energy is a signal that rest and revitalization are needed, not a weakness to be overridden by chemical stimulants.

Coffee Withdrawal
If you decide to experiment with eliminating caffeine, you’ll quickly discover it’s addictive. Other than the morning fatigue, which can often be reduced with a shower and some vigorous exercise, and the sluggish bowels, which can often be stimulated by another hot drink (although not always as effectively), the main withdrawal symptom is a headache. This usually announces itself as a dull, heavy pain, but it can take the form of a severe tension headache or migraine, beginning 16 to 36 hours after the last cup (depending on the habitual level of consumption) and lasting two to three days.

For those who wish to persist in the cold-turkey approach to self-decaffeination, the homeopathic remedy nux vomica 30c taken nightly for three to seven days may help, especially if the first dose is taken the night before mounting your first assault on the habit. Ease Plus, an herbal remedy based on a traditional Chinese formula, invigorates the liver and digestive system while calming the nervous system — all of which may make the transition easier.

Patience also helps, and if worst comes to worst, so may an ounce or two of the offending brew itself. If an abrupt halt seems too radical, a gradual transition may be more palatable, although it will require persistence. Eliminate a cup from your daily quota, stay at that level until you are comfortable, and then eliminate another cup. You can also gradually make the brew less concentrated either by diluting it with water or milk or by substituting black tea. Another trick is to eliminate the sweetener before you begin to eliminate the coffee, especially if you’ve been using sugar. Caffeine and sugar seem to be a particularly habit-forming combination.

Dropping caffeine from your life is like changing any habit — the best approach is to make the smallest change possible that still gets the job done: keep the rituals, change only what’s in the cup. Decaf may help in the transition, although if you really want to pursue this, herbal tea, a roasted grain beverage, or hot water mixed with fresh lemon juice and honey are preferable.

Pat Klein, R.Ph., is a pharmacist who has been working in holistic health care for over 25 years.

Yoga+ is an award-winning, independent magazine that contemplates the deeper dimensions of spiritual life--exploring the power of yoga practice and philosophy to not only transform our bodies and minds, but inspire meaningful engagement in our society, environment, and the global community.

By Steve Savage, Green Options

The industry that has been providing us with high quality coffee may seem to be doing well today, but it actually faces a combination of issues that may well render our lattes and cappuccinos a very expensive indulgence in the future.  We will probably stop worrying about whether it is “Fair Trade” or “Organic” and worry about whether we can get it at all.

“Arabica” Coffee - the Good Stuff

Any coffee aficionado will tell you that ‘arabica‘ coffee (Caffea arabica) is far better than the lowly ‘robusta’ coffee (Caffea canephora) that made up the Folgers-style “cup of Joe” that I grew up drinking.  These are actually two different species of coffee and arabica only does well in a limited range of environments - mainly consisting of higher elevations in the tropics. At lower elevations the pests (insects and diseases that ‘robusta’ can tolerate), devastate the more delicate, arabica types.

Coffee Production Problem One

The places where arabica coffee can grow are shrinking. Even subtle temperature increases caused by climate change raise the elevation limit for successful arabica cultivation. Mountains get smaller as you go higher so you can imagine the issue. There is less and less land suitable for arabica production. If this was the only problem it might be fixable, but it isn’t coffee’s only challenge.

Coffee Production Problem Two

Arabica coffee production is not well suited to mechanization, both because it is often grown on difficult terrain, and because it doesn’t have a normal, “crop” cycle. Coffee has many “flushes” of flowers triggered throughout the year by precipitation. At any given time there are coffee berries of different levels of maturity on every branch. That is why it needs to be hand-harvested if you want good quality. That feature of the coffee industry puts it on a collision course with demographic trends in many coffee producing regions of the world. As fertility rates fall and populations age, there are going to be less and less people who are able or willing to do this sort of difficult, low-paying work. One major coffee company commissioned a survey of coffee growers in Central America asking what changes they would like to see to make coffee growing better. The overwhelming response was the desire to grow something other than coffee. “Fair Trade” or not, most people who grow coffee are not thrilled about doing it and there are going to be fewer and fewer folks willing to make that effort in the future. So this part of the coffee industry is not only facing a smaller growing area, it is facing a lack of growers.

Why Plant Breeding Won’t Save the Day

If you have read my previous blogs you know that I am a big believer in technological solutions to agricultural problems or challenges.  In this case I don’t believe that will happen. My friend, John Vendeland, explained the problem to me (he should know, he got an achievement award from the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) for his work on developing the coffee industry in Kuawi in the 1980s). John explained that while it is possible to use some rather extreme “conventional breeding” methods to move pest resistance genes from ‘robusta’ coffee to arabica lines (it requires chromosome doubling of the ‘robusta’ and many back-crossings), the process is so slow that it won’t really help. The old picture below is of John with Dr. Alcides Carvahlo, a very influential coffee breeder who did this sort of difficult work for his entire, 52 year career. He died in 1993 and some of what he was working on has still not been commercialized because the process takes more than 20 years. Breeders are still working, but these issues are arising too fast.

Could Biotech Help?

John was asked to give a talk to the SCAA last year about the potential of biotechnology to help the coffee industry (an industry that pledged not to allow any biotech back in the 1990s). His message was blunt. “Don’t either worry about biotech coming in to the coffee industry or hope that it will.” He explained that no company is going to invest the $30-60 million it would take to do the research and regulatory work to commercialize biotech coffee because it just doesn’t “pencil.” Yes, there is a lot of coffee grown (>10 million hectares), but very little is planted in a given year, and maybe 50 to 100 ha would be the accessible part of the market in a given year.  At that rate there would be no way to recover the investment.

Not surprisingly, none of the companies that develop GMO crops are even thinking about coffee today. It isn’t even clear whether it would be possible to deal with arabica’s pest or ripening issues with transgenic methods. In any case it does not matter because it isn’t going to happen. That conclusion would stand even without factoring-in the “marketing uncertainty” of GMO coffee.

What To Do as a Coffee Drinker?

I wouldn’t start hoarding supplies of premium coffee beans in your freezer. These are trends that are going to play-out over decades, not years. Even if it happens faster, life could go on without good coffee, right? (well, maybe not in Seattle…)

You are welcome to comment on this post or to email me directly at feedback.sdsavage@gmail.com.

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