There’s nothing like a cup of coffee in the morning. Sometimes you just need that hit of caffeine when you first wake up to spring you into action on those really rough days (especially in winter, when it has the nerve to still be DARK outside when we wake up.
Apparently, as one expert is now warning us, this isn’t very good for our health.
As far as I’m concerned, coffee is the eighth wonder of the universe.
It’s delicious, it can cool you down on a summer day but warm you up on a winter one, it smells amazing, it can be as flavorful or as sweet or as bitter as you like it, and there’s pretty much no bad way to make it.
On top of all of that, it gets me ready to face the day.
We’ve all heard the joke about how some people aren’t really human until they have their first cup of coffee in the morning, and I’m definitely one of those.
Apparently, however, the morning of routine of waking up and downing a cup of coffee as your breakfast can be one that’s having a pretty serious effect on our bodies, and not in the way we’re hoping it does.
Functional nutritional therapist Olivia Hedlund made a TikTok on the subject.
“If you drink coffee first thing on an empty stomach in the morning, stop what you’re doing and listen,” she claims in a video along with text over the screen that reads, “STOP DRINKING COFFEE ON AN EMPTY STOMACH!!!!”
“You are messing with your hormones,” she declares.
“Coffee is not only acidic so it’s hard on your stomach in the morning but it literally causes your body to go into a stress response, to shoot out cortisol, and to put us in kind of a fight or flight state.”
Olivia explains that’s what causes some of the pretty common reactions to coffee.
“That’s why a lot of people get jittery, shaky when they drink coffee on an empty stomach in the morning but it’s also why we get that really good feeling, like we can conquer the world,” she explains .
“Even though it feels really good, it’s really, really, really hard on your body, especially if you’re a woman, or you have hormones, which we all do,” she says.
“I used to drink multiple cups of coffee on an empty stomach and feel like I was on top of the world and then I would have a bunch of hormonal acne and wonder why. It’s because your body is stressed out.”
Don’t worry — you don’t have to give up coffee entirely.
“Have something small before you have a coffee, make it a goal, I promise you will notice a difference if you’re struggling with hormonal imbalance or even gut issues,” she says .
What do you think?
Are you going to be giving up your coffee-for-breakfast lifestyle, or have you already been on board the toast first, coffee second train? Let us know how you feel in the comments!
