Should You Quit Caffeine?
How to know when your daily coffee is doing more harm than good.
Why Quit Caffeine?
Most of us never think twice about our love for caffeinated drinks. Caffeine is the most ubiquitous psychoactive substance on the planet. It can feel nearly impossible to find an adult who doesn’t drink tea or coffee on a regular basis.
Caffeine is also widely accepted as beneficial: it helps us wake up in the morning, concentrate at work, and even perform better at sports. With so much going for it, why would anyone ever want to quit?
My trouble with caffeine arose last year, when I quit smoking and started to get seriously bad insomnia. At first I assumed that quitting nicotine was messing with my sleep, but I soon learned that this was only half-right.
Nicotine cessation does not directly lead to insomnia, but it can indirectly cause sleep problems through caffeine. Nicotine use actually limits the effect that caffeine has on your body. Once you quit smoking, the caffeine is no longer inhibited, and therefore often causes insomnia.
After learning this, I immediately cut down on my caffeine intake. My sleep quickly improved.
Feeling inspired, I decided to eliminate caffeine from my diet entirely as a New…
