Skip to main content

30-Day Caffeine and Cortisol Challenge - Result: Inconclusive

No Coffee For Me!

Well, I don't know what I learned on this issue.  No, that's not true, I learned a lot about N=1 tests.

One of the problems with N=1 testing of any kind is that it's hard to isolate all the variables one needs to have a conclusive outcome or result, and that's most certainly the case with my 30-Day Caffeine and Cortisol challenge.

I was doing well with the removal of caffeine from my diet on all fronts until last week, when I did my first shift of a week of monitoring our nightly processes for my employer.  While this wasn't supposed to be a stressful situation, it was for a couple of reasons, one of which was a change in the amount of sleep I got.

I normally get to bed around 10:00 and wake up around 5:00 or 5:30 in the morning, making my normal sleep time about 7 hours.  But as one of the processes I had to monitor finished at 10:20 PM, that meant staying up later than normal.  And not only that, it necessitated sitting in front of the computer at that time, and we've heard a number of different sources talk about how that can cause problems in falling into deep sleep (or falling asleep at all).

So the practical side of all this - the result of my caffeine-free 30 days is that I'm just tired.  And it's not because of the loss of caffeine - I did my best not to drink any but didn't quite make it to the end of the 30 days.  No, it's because of outside forces, really.  The cortisol levels in my body were higher than normal anyway, because of sleep issues.  So I wasn't playing on a level playing field the entire time.

Lesson learned: the next time I decide to do some of this N=1 testing, pick a better time to do it.  I have five-week periods where I won't have to monitor the processes and that would be a better time to do these things.  So perhaps we'll try it again after the next monitoring period.  Until then, it's back to the basics with Paleo, bearing down on better food choices, more consistent exercise, and better sleep especially!
Labels:

Comments

  1. 30-Day Caffeine and Cortisol Challenge – Result: Inconclusive …July 18, 2011 at 11:41 AM

    [...] post: 30-Day Caffeine and Cortisol Challenge – Result: Inconclusive … Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: morning, normally-get, the-computer, [...]

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Caffeine and Cortisol - a 30-Day Experiment

No Caffeine for Me! Today, I began upon a 30-day experiment to reduce my cortisol levels by removing coffee from my diet. The goal is to see how it might be affecting my cognitive function and my belly fat. Cortisol is a hormone that is related to stress .  At a very basic level, cortisol is created as a response to stressors in our environment.  Back when we were still chucking spears at deer and chasing down antelope, cortisol was helping to preserve our lives by giving us quick energy by signalling to our livers that it was time to engage in a process known as gluconeogenesis. This process is basically the breakdown of amino acids, the building blocks of protein, into glucose - one of the two monosaccharides (the healthy one) that our bodies use for fuel. Picture this - you're walking across the street, enjoying the day, when suddenly some inattentive driver tries to turn and doesn't see you.  Your heart rate speeds up, and you get a little burst of speed to quickly sprint o
18 comments
Read more

More on Journaling: So many tools...

Journaling was long a habit that I wanted to pick up but just never did.  And it was never because I didn't believe in its worth, it was that I just never built the habit or found the proper method that worked best for me.  I'd start it for a while, be enthusiastic about it, and then lose the habit when something else came up and interrupted me.   That's all changed for me now, as I look forward each morning and night to journaling in my newest tool I've found.  But that search has clued me in to a ton of great journaling tools that might help you as you're looking for that great push to get you into the journaling habit!   The Five-Minute-Journal:    This is obviously   the one I've adopted .  It's simple, it's quick, and it does the trick.  I won't expand into stuff I've already talked about with this in the two posts I've done on this fantastic tool.  But let's talk about some of the other aspects of the Five-Minute Journal.
4 comments
Read more

Low-carb/Gluten-free helps with ADHD in study

The ADHD Research Centre in Eindhoven, the Netherlands has some interesting things to say about the treatment of children with ADHD: Diet can do it. Medscape, a website affiliated with WebMD , reports on a study by the Centre where groups of children with ADHD symptoms and behaviors were tested on their reaction to an elimination diet. The study included 100 children with ADHD, all of whom were checked for allergic reactions to foods before the study began.  Half were placed into a control group, half into a test group where their diet was limited to "mainly rice, meat vegetables, pears, and water, complemented with potatoes, fruits, and wheat."  And all the children were monitored by their parents for behavior changes. Now here's the interesting part:  after 2 weeks, 41 of the children in the test group were showing no changes, so the diet was limited even more to rice, meat, vegetables, pears, and water.  Notice what was left out:  gluten and fructose via the wheat and
5 comments
Read more