How Drinking Coffee Might Help You Manage Stress?
Video – VLog #25
Can drinking coffee help you manage your stress?
David Logan talks to Willie Nicol about the coffee challenge he has set for the month of September in 2020. No coffee for the month of September. Upon checking in with one challenger, he got the reply “Oh David had to sucuumb to a tea earlier, so exhausted and so tired … ”
As of writing (18th September 2020) David hasn’t touched coffee (or tea) for the month so far. Watch this space for an update.
Seeing coffee as a “comfort-food”, can these foods / drinks reduce your stress levels?
Script VLog #25
David Logan: Hi, and welcome. Another week of The Techno Dinosaur meets the IT Geek. My name is David Logan. I am the IT Geek. I explain technology, keep it simple, take the jargon out for the Techno Dinosaur. I am based here in Annan, South-West Scotland UK. With me today is Willie Nicol. So Willie, how are you and where are you today?
Willie Nicol: Hi David. I am very well thanks. I am indeed the Techno Dinosaur although I actually manage to earn a living as a Life Coach. I am based in Troon, South Ayrshire, Scotland.
David Logan: Fantastic, we are on week number 25 this week – the video. Who would have thought half a year later, we are still doing this? This week I have a question for you. I set up a coffee challenge on Facebook. I do not know if you see the daily videos I do on Facebook? This time it was a challenge to stop drinking coffee for one month. Which we are currently in the middle of September. We are in the middle of this now. I had a couple of people who volunteered. Through messenger I went back to a few of the volunteers and I asked. One of them came back. David I have just had a tea, so stressed, so exhausted. Now he has maybe had coffee for a maybe couple of days. Missed it for a couple of days. But the question to you. For stress, do people go to coffee, go to tea or other foods, supplements to keep the stress levels down?
Willie Nicol: I think the short answer David is yes. We’ve heard of comfort eating, comfort drinking, stress eating and stress drinking. I have some notes here that I found online about levels of stress. Let me just quote this to you. In a YouGov study of stress levels in the UK in 2018. 74% of British people said they were so stressed, they felt overwhelmed or unable to cope. This caused 46% of them to eat too much or make unhealthy food choices and 29% of them started drinking more heavily. An American Psychological Association study found that about 25% of Americans rate their stress levels as 8 out of 10 on a 1 to 10 scale. As I have eluded to previously stress is an issue. The way we cope with stress varies individual to individual but there are some common themes. We talked previously about stress being similar to the fight or flight syndrome. Where when confronted with danger our brain automatically triggers certain reactions in preparation for fight or flight and viewers may remember me talking about production of adrenaline. Which stimulates your heart to be faster, pumps blood around your body prepares you for that fight or flight situation. And there is another element where it subdues non essential functions that are not required for fight or flight. So it suppresses your appetite, your immune system and all these non essential functions for fight or flight. So that will be the good thing it also stimulates a hormone called cortisol and over a prolonged period cortisol actually stimulates your appetite. So if the stress levels remain at high level and the cortisol levels do not return to normal or your cortisol autopilot switch remains in the on position you are kind of tempted to eat more. That also applies to drinking. We may reach for coffee, fizzy drinks, energy drinks, all of which have caffeine. Or we may actually reach for the bottle of beer or a cheeky gin and tonic. Using these stress relief mechanisms is fine up to a point but if we continue to use these simplistic coping mechanisms over a prolonged period because we are suffering from prolonged stress. As you can imagine that is not a good thing.
David Logan: You mentioned there some drinks, gin and tonic for example, a beer or a coffee. What is the common factors there? Is it comfort drink or comfort food do you think?
Willie Nicol: There are, there is.
David Logan: Or the sugar content?
Willie Nicol: Sugar content, fat content. There is certain foods generally high on sugar, high on fat which they call comfort foods. Because they trigger with in us a feeling of comfort and release or release of stress or relief from stress and that is why we have a tendency to go for the cookie jar or a big hamburger or whatever. Right, we want something to make us feel better because we are stressed. So instead of having a nice big glass of water or juice or reaching for a bit of fruit. We are tempted to go for slightly more unhealthy options and a part of it is down to our mental state because what do we do when we are stressed. We have a cookie or we have a cigarette, smoke a cigarette or whatever. Have a cup of coffee. There is also the physiological elements I touched on earlier where you have hormones within your body that can stimulate your appetite and if your appetite is stimulated you will want something tasty. You want something that makes you feel better, the comfort foods, that’s why you get the term comfort eating. So our reactions to stress when it comes to eating and drinking can be partly psychological up here, and partly physiological because of the triggers that our body produces and a very interesting thing which I did not know again. I am again going to refer to my notes. There is a hormone called ghrelin which is GHRELIN. Which is known as the hunger hormone because it stimulates appetite, increases food intake and promotes fat storage. So we’re eating a lot of unhealthy stuff and this hormone triggers, we are going to put on more weight and that might make us even more stressed because we are putting weight on. These comfort foods can actually become cravings. I’ve only heard that cravings or I need something to eat, and it must be a bag of crisps right or it must be full fat coffee. None of this decaf nonsense, right in fact, give me two shots in that Mr Costa man. Like everything in moderation, yes that is great but if you confess to me that many moons ago you drank 10 cups of coffee a day. Which without being impolite, is not a good thing. So we have got to look at the psychological thing, our thoughts create emotions. Which then create actions, so we think something that stimulates an emotion will then promt to take some sort of action. Whenever we take an action there is an outcome. So if we think i am really stressed, what do I do? I better have a bag of cookies. So we go and eat the cookies and the result is that we feel full and probably not very good at the end of it. So that is the psychological thing. Our behaviour is influenced on the way we think and then once we have done that thing the body kind of contributes as well. The stress coping mechanisms, we have talked about before, need to be brought into the equation. So instead of reaching for the cookies, breathing exercises, physical exercise, mindfulness, meditation and yes it takes discipline, self discipline but if you want to deal with the whole stress thing, right, look at these stress release mechanisms rather than automatically comfort eating, comfort drinking and I am not suggesting we are all becoming raging alcoholics but think about the caffeine intake. The fizzy drinks, the energy drinks etcetera etcetera. As a means to cope with your stress there are better and healthier ways of doing it.
David Logan: Fantastic. Good. I’ve got another question for you.
Willie Nicol: Okay
David Logan: But I will leave that until the next video. I’ll leave that okay.
Willie Nicol: Okay fine thank you.
David Logan: I think we need to finish, close this to get under the limit. So to the viewer, if you’ve got any questions to fire to Willie, comment down below on any of the social media channels, LinkedIn, You Tube, Facebook, Twitter. Drop us a comment. So that is us for this week. If you are stressed, if you are anxious speak to Willie. Thank you, have a great week. Stay safe and stay healthy. Thank you.
Willie Nicol: Thanks David. I will reiterate that advice, stay healthy, stay safe and if you’re stressed get in touch. It is goodbye from me Willie Nicol, Life Coach, Techno Dinosaur.
