Coffee, burnout & brain fog.
Does your office have a coffee machine or provide free coffee during team or client meetings?
If you find you’re at the coffee machine a few times a day, this could be contributing to your brain fog & post-lunch slump in productivity.
Here is how.
Brain fog is characterised by:
feeling “spacy” or confused.
feeling fatigued.
thinking more slowly than usual, and needing more time to complete simple tasks.
being easily distracted.
having trouble organizing thoughts or activities.
forgetfulness, such as forgetting daily tasks or losing a train of thought.
Sounds like you?
If so, maybe you're like the majority of my clients who come to me with brain fog symptoms and tell me that they have drink at least 2-3 cups of coffee a day to clear the brain fog and stay focused.
Is that the best course of action for a person on the road to burnout?
Judge for yourself:
Coffee stresses out your adrenal glands and accelerates your path to burnout. If you're experiencing brain fog, it's pretty likely that your adrenal glands have been chronically pumping out stress hormones for years and they're tired. As a result, your ability to have a healthy stress response will be compromised. Drinking coffee pushes your already stressed out adrenal glands to make cortisol & give you that energy boost, accelerating your path to burnout.
Coffee is a diuretic & your body wakes up dehydrated because it's lost 1L of water during sleep. So, really all you're encouraging your body to do is release all the water soluble nutrients like VitC, which are so vital for a healthy stress response and immune function.
Coffee jitters anyone? That coffee consumption is also making you more susceptible to anxiety because of the double whammy of increasing your cortisol levels and dehydrating the body.
The acidity in coffee also increases your susceptibility to digestive disorders, mostly notably heartburn & Gastro-Esophaegul Reflux "GERD" (see my previous post for a list of these symptoms). If you're already experiencing digestive upsets related to stress, coffee will definitely exacerbate those, which in turn will lead to nutrient deficiencies & subsequent physical and mental symptoms of distress, including more brain fog!
Unfortunately, the body science is not on the side of coffee for those people who are highly stressed and on the road to burnout.
Coffee is simply masking your symptoms of burnout and accelerating your path there.
But does that mean you have to quit coffee altogether?
What can you & your company do instead to really support your nervous system & fuel your energy levels?
That's what I get into during my Wellness Coaching for Resilient Leaders. Three sessions is all it takes for your leaders and employees to clear the brain fog, increase energy levels, sleep better & be their best selves both at work and at home.
Check out my Wellness Coaching for Resilient Leaders and reach out today to get your people thriving!
A former capital markets banker, Cristina Tahoces is a nutritional therapist and owner of Thrive Nutrition Practice, a global online wellness business that helps corporate leaders be more physically & mentally resilient to stress. She shared her nutritional approach on the TEDx stage in 2017 as part of the TED Women’s Global Conference. She is a sought-after expert speaker & panelist on burnout, women’s post-natal wellness & metabolic health.