Coffee Anyone?

Jonathan Clogstoun-Willmott Acupuncture, Homeopathy, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in Edinburgh September 25, 2014

I love coffee. It’s a problem. It gives me tinnitus and disturbs my sleep. And it raises my blood pressure.

Yet science apparently says coffee is good for me. I think what science says about coffee confuses the primary and secondary effects of drugs.

Let me explain. Medicines are like magic bullets. Well, obviously, they don’t think they’re magic. But bullets, yes: something that does the job and then self-destructs.

But you see, that’s not what happens. When your body metabolises the bullet, it draws on your body’s resources and produces waste products. These processes generate symptoms that, for a while, you may not notice.

Ages ago, I never noticed tinnitus after coffee. It just crept up on me over the years.

So why do I take it? (Very seldom, by the way) Because, I like the taste, and after it I feel great – like superman! I feel I can fly. I put the energy into getting things done faster or more vigorously. (Did you know that weight-lifters reckon they work-out better after coffee?)

I once had a patient who wanted me to help her stop smoking. She chain-smoked. She didn’t like smoking but it calmed her down. Why did she need calming? Because she chain-drank coffee, which gave her palpitations and a constant ‘wired’ feeling. Only tobacco steadied this.

Why did she need coffee? Because she was responsible for funding her department – she was a professor – and she had to write the grant applications, almost a full-time job. She couldn’t write them fast enough unless she drank coffee.

So she drank coffee for its primary effect, to keep her awake and ‘active’. The secondary effects were palpitations and sleeplessness.

To counter those, she took tobacco, primary effect calming: secondary effect? Well you probably know what the secondary effects of smoking are, though it has taken the tobacco companies a while tacitly to admit them.

In Chinese medicine, each herb is known to have a secondary effect, so they don’t give them alone, but with other herbs to balance them in ways recognised centuries ago.

One patient I had was a psychiatrist. He admitted that psychiatrists discovered, only over time, the best combination of drugs for a patient.

But it was a messy process, especially with new drugs, and the tests supposedly carried out before drug approval really didn’t solve the problem.

What does coffee do? It boosts yang, making you more ‘vital’.

Great you say, that’s what I want.

But where does that yang come from? From your reserves of yin.

What then? Eventually, yin deficiency, leading to ongoing tension, insomnia, ‘wired’ irritability and much else. So the secondary effect is often like, but not the same as the primary effect, except you need another drug to get rid of it.

And that other drug will have primary and secondary effects! (Big fleas have little fleas, upon their backs to bite them. And little fleas have smaller fleas, and so, ad infinitum.)