Today we’re going to talk about one substance that is a very, very sneaky substance, that is snuck into the American consciousness. It’s relatively expensive and I don’t just mean in money. It takes its toll on the kidneys and it disrupts the digestive system over time. But it’s sneaky because it makes us feel really good.
So this particular substance is a damp, hot substance. Now what that means is it adds to the internal temperature of the body. We’re here in Bradenton, Florida right now and this is a damp, hot climate.
So the foods that are most suited for this type of climate are those which are not damp and hot. OK. I have to get to the punchline, so that I can tell you what the good news is.
The punchline is this has to do with coffee and the reason that it’s so important is because coffee depletes the yin of the body and over time, it depletes the yang of the body.
Well, even if you don’t know what yin and yang are, specifically medically in the body, you know that there’s only the two of them and that both – if both are being depleted over time, that’s not good news.
What are yin and yang? Yin is moisture. It’s fluid. Medically in the body it’s blood and saliva. It’s the fluids of the body. Yang is energy. It’s the sun. It’s motion.
Medically in the body, it’s cellular metabolism or the communication between the cells. So if there is a substance that depletes, takes away both the yin which you know that it does this because we all know that if you drink coffee, it’s going to make you pee and it also depletes yang if it decreases cellular metabolism over time.
Then that’s something we probably want to avoid. Now let me quickly come to the good news, which is this isn’t about caffeine. So if you are a person, especially if you are a new parent that has a young child that is keeping you up at night, I am by no means recommending that you not have any caffeine in your life because you will probably have a car wreck in the near future if you don’t.
So this isn’t that conversation. But the green tea, especially a really good green tea, like matcha or sencha and ideally organic, has the same amount – has also a significant amount of caffeine but it doesn’t have the damp heat effects that coffee does.
What happens when you drink coffee over time is it depletes the kidney, both yin and yang, and this means that you will tend to get more tired over time without your coffee.
This is a Chinese medicine way of looking at coffee. But there’s also another more straightforward way of looking at it, which is that almost all coffees are rife with a mold called Ochratoxin B and this is a problem because again, we are in a climate where there’s a high mold exposure to everyone here all the time. We are in a coastal region and most people already have a mold exposure, whether they live in Florida or not.
So when we daily introduce additional mold to our body, then we are decreasing our vitality over time. Why is this so difficult to figure out? Well, it’s because coffee itself opens the orifices. It makes us feel more and makes us think faster. It makes us move. It also adds to heart palpitations, irritability, a general kind of movement without groundedness.
So another herb that would be a better fit for daily consumption is Reishi mushroom or Ganoderma and the reason for that is because it has the same properties of opening the orifices, making us smarter, more aware, more intelligent, but it doesn’t leave us ungrounded. It leaves us very strong and rooted at the same time that we’re trying to be productive.
If you’ve ever had a few cups of coffee on an empty stomach and you found yourself running around so fast that you weren’t really even being productive, then that’s a very good example of what it feels like with overexposure to coffee.
Now if you’re also adding in milk and sugar, which is what most Americans do, then we’re increasing the dampness and the heat that’s tied to that and if you’re using a Coffee-Mate or an International Delight style creamer, then you’re additionally adding in about 17 different known carcinogens in that process.
So as you are working on being kind to your body and to discovering what needs to be done in order to live your healthiest, most vital life, I encourage you to consider the experiment of letting go of coffee. Try it for three weeks and see how you really feel.
By the way, one way that you can see if it’s working is if you have dark circles under your eyes typically and those start to go away because that’s a sign of kidney chi deficiency, kidney yin deficiency and when your organs and your kidneys start to become more vital, then those tell-tale signs under your eyes will disappear.
I am Dr. Cynthia Clark and that’s good medicine.