Sunday, November 16, 2008

instant coffee



Joel got to spend the afternoon with Dad at two different Carrs stores keeping him company, eating, drinking a mocha (which he didn't like but drank it all anyway -- that's our "tightwad" parenting coming through!), and reading. Luke wanted to go, too, of course, so that he could have hot chocolate. I told him we'd have hot chocolate with whipped cream just like at Carrs if he wouldn't throw a fit about not getting to be with Dad. He agreed, so I made hot chocolate with eggnog and whipped cream (yumm!) for Luke and Makenzie and coffee with eggnog for me. The only problem with mine was that I used instant coffee. I usually get coffee beans from Costco (the cheapest ones) to make lattes. When we were at Costco yesterday, though, I accidentally got regular instead of decaf. So this morning when I went to Carrs to get the whipped cream (and an eggnog latte, of course), I also got coffee (not enough time to go back to Costco until I'm not sure when). I thought I'd try instant coffee -- much easier than brewing. But it didn't taste good at ALL! I'm sure I didn't put the right amount in, so I'll have to keep trying on that.

Why no caffeine? I seem to be prone to migraines, and I got SICK of being sick all the time so I read a book about stopping headaches. It was written by a neurologist who wrote that everyone has a headache level. Many different things can stack up to reach or exceed that level (stress, weather, different foods, and caffeine). His advice was to eliminate any of those things that stack up that I possibly can. I can't really eliminate the stress (I love my kids -- I don't want to eliminate them :-) or the weather, but there was a huge list of foods that can trigger headaches (citrus, msg, nuts, nitrates/nitrites . . .). His first advice, though, was to cut out caffeine. This surprised me because the migraine pills are made up of caffeine, aspirin, and acetaminophen. So why would I want to cut out the caffeine? Because caffeine stops a headache by constricting the swollen blood vessels in the head. When it wears off, those blood vessels swell back up, sometimes causing a worse headache than before. This was probably why I was getting headaches so often and why they kept getting worse. I haven't had caffeine (at least, not much) for several months now. I have little headaches, but nothing so horrible that I can't function. Praise God (and the neurologist author) for that!

2 comments:

  1. I was just browsing through blogs and knew you must be from Alaska when I read the note about "Carrs"! I grew up in Anchorage and Big Lake :)

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  2. I want to know more about the side effect of caffeine.

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The Hofacker Family 2008