More than 18% of adults 18 years or older suffer from some form of anxiety every day. There are many different reasons that people experience anxiety and that can make identifying the real cause difficult to diagnose. Effective treatments for anxiety do exist and in many cases, simple lifestyle changes can help. One common contributor to anxiety in adults is our daily cup of coffee – reducing the amount of coffee we drink each day can help to reduce anxiety. Here are the reasons why coffee may be causing your anxiety.
Everything in Moderation
Caffeine is one of the main ingredients in coffee and it also happens to be a stimulant. It helps to keep us alert and gives us the extra energy we need to get through our workday. Drinking coffee in moderation can have a positive influence or our health. If we drink 1 or 2 cups in the morning coffee can be good for us. It’s when we choose to drink more than 4 or 5 cups a day that we usually run into problems.
When we have too much caffeine on our system it can cause anxiety, or make existing anxiety symptoms worse. Cutting back on our daily intake will help alleviate anxiety for many, although it’s never a bad idea to seek professional help as well.
Start with a Plan
Most people don’t track their daily coffee drinking, but it’s a good idea. Keeping a diary of the foods and beverages you ingest can help to identify where you need to cut back. You may not realize you’re drinking too much coffee, but by tracking your daily activities this way, it will be easier to identify if you need to cut back.
Coffee may just be one of many parts of your diet that contributes to your anxiety. Keeping a food and beverage diary will also help to identify other foods that are contributing to your anxiety. You may find that you need to reduce your daily coffee and that you need to cut back in other areas as well.
Coffee and Stress
The caffeine in coffee causes our body to react much as it does in stressful situations. It elevates our heart rate and it can affect our blood pressure as well. People suffering from anxiety have increased levels of cortisol and epinephrine. Caffeine can also cause elevated levels of these common stress-related hormones.
Reducing our daily coffee intake to 1 or 2 cups a day relieves anxiety symptoms because it reduces the amount of these stress hormones to manageable levels. If it doesn’t help, it may be best to switch to a decaffeinated coffee blend.
Coffee keeps us Awake
When we’re working on a major project for work that extra cup of coffee may seem like a great idea to keep us awake and alert, so we can make a deadline. The problem is it may also be contributing to our anxiety by blocking access to neurotransmitters in the brain that keep us calm.
Coffee without Anxiety
The easiest way to avoid increased anxiety levels caused by coffee is to switch to decaffeinated. If you’re not willing to give up caffeine in your coffee altogether, restricting yourself to 1 or 2 cups a day will help.