Did you know? You should never drink coffee on an empty stomach. 

The timing of when you have your coffee can have a major impact on your hormones and overall well-being. 

Coffee raises your natural, morning-time cortisol spike. This cortisol spike is necessary because you need a rise in blood glucose levels to help you wake up and get up. Yet, raising this spike beyond its natural limits will result in your body going into an unnatural state of ‘fight of flight’. Too much cortisol will result in an increased blood sugar release into your bloodstream, which then leads to an increased insulin response, and ultimately a blood sugar level ‘crash’. This results in a stimulant-induced sugar craving cycle which is difficult to reverse later in the day. 

Cortisol and insulin mismanagement will also lead to hormonal imbalances and thus affect your menstrual cycle and PMS. 

Coffee is rich in  important nutrients such as magnesium, calcium, potassium, phosphorous, manganese, niacin, riboflavin, and pantothenic acid, and has the powerful ability to bind to and eliminate heavy metals from the body. Coffee is also a metabolic stimulator, which means that it helps the body utilise glucose faster. When you are eating enough food and consuming plenty of minerals, this fact can be an incredible performance tool, but if you are undernourished, caffeine consumption stimulates cortisol and adrenaline, which can cause you to become chronically dehydrated due to loss of minerals. This will make you feel more stressed, anxious, hypoglycaemic, irritable and moody, and also negatively affect sleep quality, and result in poor hormonal balance.

So, eat something before you drink coffee! This anchors your blood sugar, and will give the caffeine some fuel to work with. If you are completely depleted and overstimulated, and want to bring your nervous system back into balance, it may be recommended to take a little break from coffee and focus on nourishment instead. 

If you would like to become the healthiest, happiest version of yourself, and understand what nourishing your body really means, sign up for the mmacht.health

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