Christina’s Healthy Crusade: Coffee detox proves almost disastrous

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It’s mod four and I’m still half-asleep. My brain feels like it has a pulse, preventing me from focusing on my Physics classwork. I’m slightly in a daze, unable to concentrate on anything. I muster up enough concentration to go to the nurse’s office. At the minimum, I need Advil.

Actually, what I really need is coffee. That’s right, I found myself in this miserable state because that morning, my family ran out of coffee beans, and I didn’t have time to stop at Wawa on my way to school.

On a typical day, I drink a cup of coffee when I wake up and take another cup with me to school. Depending on how much schoolwork I have to get done, I drink another cup in the afternoon or evening.

The National Coffee Association’s (NCA) Annual National Drinking Trends Study in 2015 showed 59 percent of Americans drink at least one cup of coffee per day. The NCA cites coffee as containing nutrients that will reap benefits for regular coffee drinkers such as sharper memory and increased athletic endurance.

Although these benefits are awesome, along with increased energy, coffee can sometimes do more harm than good, causing anxiety, jitteriness, and insomnia for some.

When I didn’t drink coffee that one day before school, it made me realize how reliant I’ve become on coffee. I decided that for a full week, I would embark on a coffee detox.

The first few days resembled that hazy morning without coffee beans. The side effects of the detox rendered me exhausted and occasionally unable to focus.

Quitting coffee is supposed to help you sleep better. However, without the caffeine from my afternoon coffee, it took me significantly longer to do homework, and I actually ended up getting less sleep than I did before.

I inconveniently chose to challenge myself to the coffee detox the same week I had to miss part of school on Tuesday, all day Wednesday, and Thursday morning. After that, I had a few long nights of make-up assignments without a single ounce of caffeine.

By the end of the week, I somewhat adjusted, but I definitely missed coffee. Despite its health benefits, coffee can be a pain in the neck to be reliant on. Putting your coffee mugs away for a week may be a fun way to challenge yourself, but prepare yourself for some extreme grogginess.

Christina Giovanazi is a Sports Editor for The Patriot and jcpatriot.com.