Blog Posts and Articles

[Updated on March 29, 2017 with the section, “The Other Blind Spot”]

Much to the surprise of many, I’m not anti-coffee. But I think it needs to be consumed responsibly.

This post isn’t about the pros and cons of coffee or caffeine, although I offer some tips at the end on how to enjoy coffee without it burning out your adrenals, interrupting your sleep, and dysregulating your blood sugar.

And if you want to read up on some of the more recent and prolific studies around the benefits of coffee, check out PubMed.

So yes, I drink coffee. One cup of organic, fair-trade, half decaf in the morning, with my breakfast. But I drink most of it after breakfast.

This is after I’ve already had my first-thing-in-the-morning cocktail of warm water with lemon, liver-supportive herbs, and black seed oil. Delicious.

I’d go full decaf, but my husband doesn’t enjoy the taste, so we compromise. That half-blend of “leaded” doesn’t wig me out, so I feel okay about it.

A while back, we made a major shift in the way we make coffee – and I want you to know about it because it has big implications for your hormones and immune system. 

Blind Spot
We all have blind spots, right? One of mine was that we had a typical coffeemaker – a Cuisinart drip coffeemaker.

One day, I slapped myself on the forehead. Oh my gosh, the guts of this thing are made of plastic! It’s not like I didn’t know this, but…again, a blind spot…

If you’re at all tuned into holistic health and wellness, you likely know that plastic is bad news – especially when heated. “You heat it, you eat it.”

And it’s not just BPA that you need to worry about. BPA, the synthetic, estrogen-like chemical in polycarbonate plastic that has endocrine-disrupting effects that can cause reproductive, developmental, behavioral, and neurological harm, is the darling of most “plastics are toxic” headlines.

But new research is showing that all plastics, even BPA-free plastics, are a problem. A big problem.

When I hear about “safe” BPA-free plastics, I stick my fingers in my ears and go, “La la la la la.”

So back to my coffeemaker. The implications of how the water is heated to a high temperature and then filtered through a plastic unit before making its way to the pot hit me like a ton of bricks.

I said to my husband, “We have to get rid of this thing.” 

Body Burden
I’ve worked hard to rid my home of toxins and endocrine disruptors, as should everyone. I’m a sleuth when it comes to water filters, air filters, skincare products and cosmetics, cleaning products, and what I use in my kitchen. For example, you’ll never find anything nonstick in my kitchen.

Don’t even get me started on the journey I went on right before my daughter came into the world. I refuse to let her get “hormonally hothoused.”

So while I’m not wide-eyed, a “the sky is falling” coach or mommy and I approach this whole world of toxins and endocrine disruptors in a pretty practical, you-don’t-have-to-be-perfect manner, I still encourage people to do the best they can to protect themselves and their families. 

I educate my clients on how to clean up their skincare and cosmetics, food, water, kitchen tools and gadgets (often riddled with plastics), home cleaning products, and even their mattresses and other sources of toxic flame retardants to reduce their body burden and toxic load, which altogether has big implications for our hormones – and our immune system.

While I was shocked about my blind spot, I didn’t freak out because I do a pretty good job with everything else – and because freaking out doesn’t do any good and would just torment my adrenals. 

The Solution
I set out to find a plastic-free, wireless coffeemaker that wasn’t a French press or an Italian stovetop model.

(I know that a lot of people love their presses. I don’t like the unfiltered oils from a press – you can see them floating on the top of your cup. They really do a number on me – I get too wigged out. But I don’t have a problem with coffee from a press from a health standpoint. In fact, some experts claim that you get the most health benefits from coffee when it’s unfiltered. In other words, with the oils. Still, some say that the oils can cause irritation of the digestive lining. As with everything, find what works for you.)

Okay, so does this plastic-free, wireless coffeemaker exist?

It does.

It’s called Chemex. Not a sexy name, but I’m in love with it.

It makes the best tasting coffee I’ve ever had – it’s rich without bitterness or sediment.

And it’s sexy in the sense that it appeals to my design sensibilities.

It’s a hand-blown water kettle made from non-porous, borosilicate glass and fastened with a wood collar and tie. It’s even on permanent display at MOMA NY and other museums and was selected by the Illinois Institute of Technology as one of the 100 best designed products of modern times.

This thing looks beautiful sitting on our kitchen counter.

You have to get specific filters – you can’t use any ol’ coffee filter. And it’s a good idea to get a coffee drip kettle for the perfect pour. This is the one I have.

Lastly, you need to get pretty specific about how your beans are ground. As with any coffeemaker, you don’t want them too fine or too coarse. For a typical coffee grinder, you want the “metal” or #7 setting for your Chemex coffee.

Once you try Chemex, you’ll never want anything else. It’s that good. And you can feel great about the fact that it’s completely plastic-free. 

The Other Blind Spot
This hasn’t been a blind spot for me so much as it is for a lot of people – and that is plastic lids on to-go cups. If your drink – especially your hot drink – is touching toxic plastic every time you sip, you’re getting plastic exposure. With every sip.

In this case, you heat it, you drink it.

Drink lids often fall in the #6 or #7 class of plastics, with most in the #6 category, where the primary component is Styrofoam or polystyrene. Polystyrene is a neurotoxin and carcinogen and the EPA has labeled polystyrene as number five in the creation of hazardous waste.

The risks associated with Styrofoam is deserving of another post, but for now, know that it leaches into your drink, no matter what temperature. In fact, the cups are said to lose weight while in use!

The styrene in Styrofoam mimics estrogen and along with this comes whole host of issues, one of which is that the damage is comparable to that of BPA.

Plastics labeled #7 are “miscellaneous” plastics that don’t fall in the other categories of plastic and are mostly made with BPA.

So think about this. If you’re getting coffee to go, it’s often made in a coffeemaker where the hot water is coming into contact with a least one plastic part. To add insult to injury, most people are slapping a plastic lid on their cup, significantly increasing ingestion of toxic and hormone-disrupting chemicals. Talk about a double whammy.

Would you like some coffee with those toxins?

More and more coffeehouses are offering plastic-free lids, but you want to steer clear of the brown ones made with fibrous composite – unless you want your coffee to taste like cardboard.

The safe option is a lid made with corn. These are also compostable, which I feel great about.

I don’t know about other brands, but the Cornware brand has several “green” accreditations; they don’t leach, even at high temperatures; and the corn product is food grade and safe for food contact.

My favorite local coffeehouse and my food co-op both use corn-based lids. I hate walking through life with my “toxin goggles” on and in talking about endocrine disruptors and toxins in our environment with my clients, I encourage them to do the same.

Still, there are plenty of things that I get my feathers ruffled about when it comes to the toxic bath that we all swim in (and there’s a lot you can do to protect yourself, by the way), but I gotta say, when I see plastic lids stacked up at typical coffeehouses, I cringe.

(Keep in mind, this all applies to any hot drink – not just coffee. So we’re talking tea, chai, etc.)

How To Drink Coffee
A lot of people abuse coffee and other forms of caffeine. This is never a good idea, especially if you have more advanced adrenal issues.

Again, most of my clients are surprised to hear that I’m not necessarily anti-coffee. But we’re often making some shifts in how and when it’s consumed.

Let’s face it, coffee is delicious. So let’s talk about how to consume it in a way that keeps you balanced.

Here are my recommendations: 

• Your coffee should always be organic and preferably fair trade. I drink Peace Coffee, a local roaster. 

• Never use a plastic lid for to-go coffee. I realize this may be problematic if you want to drink and drive. Make your coffee at home (which will save a lot of money), drink out of a ceramic cup, or bring your own to-go cup from home. Make sure it doesn’t have a plastic interior liner or plastic lid. This is the one that I recommend. It’s completely plastic-free with a silicone lid. (Some of the Amazon reviews aren’t great, but I know a few people who have it and love it. Before writing this post, I asked two of my friends who have this cup if it makes their coffee “taste funny” and they both said, “No.”)

• Never drink coffee before breakfast. No one should drink caffeine on an empty stomach, which is a form of torture for your metabolic glands – like rocket fuel. Some will spend the rest of the day recovering from this jolt and blood sugar scramble.

• Speaking of blood sugar, caffeine acts like sugar in the body, in that it can destabilize blood sugar, but not if consumed after breakfast and in moderation.

• Don’t drink coffee after mid-morning. If you need something in the afternoon, drink herbal tea or an herbal “coffee” blend like Dandy Blend or Teechino. (These are both gluten-free.)

• Never use coffee as a crutch or a non-nutritional form of energy.

• It’s best to consume coffee with some form of fat, like whipping cream (if you can tolerate dairy) or coconut creamer. Here is our recipe for an upgrade. And yes, I know that “bulletproof coffee” is popular right now and if you like the flavor of butter in your coffee, more power to you. The problem I have with bulletproof advocates is that some claim that it’s a substitute for breakfast. It’s not. And according to this post, “The problem is that Bulletproof Coffee, the company behind the trend, is claiming that drinking a mug of fatty joe every morning instead of eating breakfast is a secret shortcut to weight loss and mental superpowers, and now the butter coffee has developed a cult of highly caffeinated, shiny-lipped adherents.”

• Lastly, examine your relationship with coffee. If you’re really dragging and fatigue is a big issue for you, you’re much better off completely eliminating caffeine, at least for a while, and using some kind of healthful substitute. One way of putting it that really resonates with people is that when you’re on the advanced end of the adrenal dysfunction spectrum, drinking caffeine is like taking out a high interest loan on your adrenals. 

This post contains affiliate links.