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Caffeine Free Health Benefits
More on the effects of caffeine:
It is estimated that 90% of people start their day with a caffeinated beverage. The other 10% of people recognize that caffeine doesn’t benefit their health. Some of us are caffeine free because we are caffeine sensitive or intolerant of its effects. Others choose to avoid it because they want the benefits of being caffeine free for their overall health. Here are the four top health benefits of having a caffeine free lifestyle.
#1 Balanced Energy
If you’re caffeine free, you depend only on nutrients you eat to keep you energized. If you’ve had enough hours of sleep, you wake up in the morning with plenty of energy and mental clarity to greet the day. On the other hand, when you’re dependent on caffeine to wake up, you don’t feel clear or able to focus until you’ve had your morning cup of coffee or tea. Caffeine has thrown off the natural circadian rhythm of your endocrine system, the glands that send out the messenger hormones that regulate the organs in the body.
Caffeine stimulates the ‘fight or flight’ response that puts the body into a state of stress. This can feel like energy, but it’s more like using a whip with a horse. You may be ready to gallop, but afterwards, you’re tired again. Caffeine-free people don’t experience the hormonal jolts that make them suddenly feel more awake but they also don’t have the subsequent crashes that cause caffeinated people to reach for more caffeine. The gain for consuming caffeine is instant stimulation but the sacrifice is balanced energy.
#2 Mood stability
Caffeine creates an altered mental state that is actually increased alertness although it can feel like a ‘high’ or even euphoric to those who don’t consume it regularly. On a habitual basis, it can become a crutch to many who find they feel depressed or irritable without it. Caffeine also stimulates anxiety and yet, many people may not suspect that their anxious feelings are coming from their caffeinated beverages. One of the most common reasons people give for quitting coffee is to reduce stress and anxiety in order to stabilize their mood.
Caffeine stimulates the endocrine system to release hormones which are the cause of the roller coaster effect on energy that can produce mood swings. When tired, people’s mood generally becomes more depressed as they don’t have the ‘get up and go’ that is required for activity. Achieving more stable moods throughout the day is a benefit of being caffeine free.
#3 Deep Sleep
It is a scientific fact that caffeine affects the quality of your sleep, whether or not you manage to fall sleep after drinking a caffeinated beverage. The quarter life of caffeine is 12 hours, so you can still have a quarter of the amount of caffeine that you drank in the morning circulating in your body by the time you go to sleep. Caffeine sensitive people feel this even more strongly which is why so many people have problems falling asleep after drinking caffeine too late in the day.
Stage 4 sleep, also called non-REM Stage 3 sleep, is your deep dreamless sleep state where tissues are repaired, cell growth occurs, and your immune system is restored and strengthened. Caffeine affects this stage of sleep the most, keeping you in lighter stages of sleep. Additionally, we naturally get less stage 4 as we age, so achieving deep sleep is essential to our health and overcoming tiredness.
There is a time in our lives when we don’t typically consume caffeine (i.e., when we’re children). People typically start to consume caffeine in their teenage years when tiredness starts to occur due to late nights and active days. Once we’re habitually using caffeine to overcome tiredness, we get into an insidious perpetual cycle where caffeine keeps us from getting a restful night’s sleep and then hooks us into drinking it when we awake to overcome our fatigue.
#4 Healthy Aging
Caffeine accelerates aging as shown in studies that analyze the length of telomeres, the short DNA sequences found at the end of our chromosomes. People who consume caffeinated beverages have shorter telomeres than people who don’t. However, the antioxidants and other phytoceuticals (water soluble chemicals in plants that exert an effect on our bodies) that naturally occur in coffee, tea and other caffeinated plants have a protective effect on telomeres. The take-home message here is don’t drink so called ‘energy’ drinks which are just sodas hyped up with more caffeine or you could be shortening your life span!
Being in a continual state of stress also accelerates aging. It lowers our immunity, impairs our digestion, and alters our sleep. Caffeine puts our bodies into a state of stress and also can cause us to feel more emotionally-charged, stressful feelings. The protective effects of plants on our bodies could be counteracted. If you feel like you’re aging too fast, change your lifestyle to reduce stress and take up healthy lifestyle habits that include avoiding dependence on caffeine.
Naturally caffeine-free plants in Teeccino
The vast majority of plants all over the world are naturally caffeine free. All of Teeccino’s ingredients are naturally caffeine free with the exception of the cacao, also known as cocoa powder, in the chocolate blends. The main stimulant in cocoa is theobromine which is a mild stimulant compared to caffeine. Caffeine is found in cocoa but in small amounts. In Teeccino, cocoa powder is used as a flavoring and thus there are only trace amounts of caffeine in the chocolate blends. There are, however, 5mg of theobromine in a serving of Teeccino’s chocolate flavors. If you want to avoid all stimulants, you can enjoy more than 30 delicious Teeccino blends without cacao.
Often Teeccino gets called "decaffeinated" by people who don't realize the difference between being naturally caffeine free and an industrial process to remove caffeine from either coffee beans or tea leaves. For a deep look at why decaffeination is inferior and perhaps even harmful, please visit our article, Decaf and Health.
