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We all try and surround ourselves with fabulous people in our workplace and I have been luckier than most.  I’ll talk more another time about how to attract the right people to work for your business but right now I just want to share a gem from the fabulous Freya who currently fills the role of my 2IC.  You see Freya is a straight talking, millenial, naturopathic graduate (Dux might I add ;)) who happens to work for the dark side as well.  Yes, it’s true, long before she started working for me, she was working for a coffee company.  Now much to Freya’s amusement this gives her a front row seat to see the foible of this addiction up close….and being a straight shooter, she thinks we humans are a bit slow 🙂

“Sometimes it feels impossible to NOT overhear a stranger’s a life changing epiphany, moment of self-realisation, or reflection on a daily basis … in the queue in the grocery store, sitting at the beach, walking down the street … these personal moments seem to strike people in very public places in the Byron shire. My internal monologue screams “Duh! Of course your SAD (Standard Australian Diet) diet was making you sad, of course you can’t concentrate when you’re dehydrated, AND OF COURSE those half a dozen coffees you drink each day are making you feel anxious!”  And although seemingly obvious to me, the relationship between what people put in their mouth and their mental health sometimes doesn’t register for a lot of the general public – even in Byron Bay.

A classic example is people’s relationship with coffee. Whether it’s genuine ignorance or denial of the facts, a lot of people have some very complicated relationships with coffee. But like any other complicated relationship, it’s all about setting boundaries and being aware. “

From the culmination of Freya’s naturopathic knowledge and her coffee consumption observations – she has settled on 3 golden rules about when NOT to consume it and I love their simplicity and their counter-intuitive qualities 😉

1. Not when You’re Tired

That’s right!! She said it 🙂 Not even the morning after a bad sleep. And definitely not after 12pm.  With a half-life of 6 hours in the average person (let’s not forget biochemical individuality and if you’re oestrogen dominant that means generally even slower caffeine metabolism, so longer half life) caffeine has the potential to hang around and wreak havoc for a long time

2.Not when You’re Stressed

Because your stress response has already ideally given you the appropriate medicinal shot of cortisol to resolve the stress, by adding in a double shot latte, you’re just going to over-rev with no additional benefit

3. Not when You’re Hungry

An empty stomach fast tracks caffeine absorption, peaking in 45 minutes.  Have you ever done this?  Freya and I have and it’s an awful slipper slope to blood sugar imbalances and ultimately a big crash!

What’s that you’re saying?  That the top two rules are the most common situations when we and our patients might reach for the black gear? We know!!  But this brings out the very worst in coffee and the very worst in us!  

And lastly, I have been told so many times by my female clients in particular, when they finally break from the auto-pilot morning coffee, that they suddenly realise that their daily locally grown coffee with a dash of house-made almond milk lovingly prepared by their most handsome and lovely local barista…just the way they like it…was actually turning them into a terribly angry, irritable bitch!  In fact, yesterday one mum told me her son begs her not to drink the stuff because of this!! So switch off the auto-pilot, be in choice and obey the 3 rules, I say! 🙂

Do you have an obsession with SAMe? Rachel does. Let her tell you why in her highly acclaimed national tour presentation ‘SAMe in Mental Health and Beyond’. Even now Rachel hears from practitioners telling her what a positive impact being confident with prescribing SAMe has had on their clinic success stories. Still the most prescribed supplement for mental health in Rachel’s practice.  You can come up to speed and get some confidence by checking out the recording here.