Nancy -

I get sent a lot of "healthy eating" books as part of running this site, and it seems every one of the last ten books I've read have spoken out about how harmful caffeine and sugar are to a body. They cause a wealth of inflammation reactions as well as hormonal imbalances and mood swings. So each book talked about how critical it was to reduce those in a diet.

I had dinner last night with my friend Nancy and we were talking about caffeine. She was told by her doctor in no uncertain terms to cut caffeine from her diet, a few years ago.

I went through that process myself about ten years ago. It was very rough, but I felt SO much better afterward. No more energy swings. I always had energy. I slept much better.

Yes absolutely it's hard to do! The body gets addicted to caffeine just like it gets addicted to cigarettes and alcohol. It has very real withdrawal symptoms.

Tea can be drunk cool - many people drink cool iced tea for example. It's fine not to drink milk - many adults are lactose intolerant anyway.

I realize change is always hard. Still, give thought to the idea that many of the stress issues might be caused by that sugar and caffeine, and that by cutting them out that health could be far improved. I know many of my visitors have found that to be the case. The human body just isn't meant for ingesting large amounts of sugar. It's only fairly recently in history that people ingested the volumes of sugar we do in a modern diet.

Think of it this way - if you were a heavy smoker, and you temporarily became a "monster" while trying to quit, would people really beg you to start smoking again just because your withdrawal period was rough?


Lisa Shea, Low Carb and Video Games Editor
Low Carb Forum