Too much of anything is obviously not good. But too much coffee? How can this not be all good right? I can tell you first hand, that I was a hard core coffee drinker. I still am a bit, but not nearly as much daily. While I coded coffee was a must, almost a ritual just like everyone else every day. That is, until I got heartburn that happened frequently over the course of a year which eventually turned into major heartburn problems and health issues. While I still drink a fair amount of coffee these days, I’m surely not drinking 3 mid-to-large cups every day like I was. That type of hard core coffee drinking would pretty much screw up anyone’s system. I know a co-worker who drank just about as much and she also had similar problems after a while. These problems are serious and happen over time if ignored.
So for about a year, I had heartburn just about every week or every other week. I hadn’t had a history of heartburn until I drank a lot of coffee and ate a lot of spicy food while I lived in CA which is a boiling pot for good Mexican salsa and lots of other goodies. I had enough frequent heartburn to warrant buying enough Prilosec off the counter to take care of every time that I got the heartburn. You wonder why COSCO sells prilosec for a steal. Because a LOT of people have continuous heartburn problems. Even when I moved from CA to IL, and stopped eating so much acidic food, Coffee kept my heartburn frequent, so it was not the food to blame after I moved anymore. But beware. If you are getting heartburn that often, and you are one who drinks a LOT of coffee, you definitely would be very smart to link the two together. And the heartburn does not have to qualify to be very strong. If it happens often (every week or two), beware. After about a year of frequent heartburn and popping a pill to take care of it each time over counter, I was very close to having Barrett’s oesophagus, a condition that is basically pre-cancerous when you don’t take care of your GERD and heartburn symptoms over time. Your chances are very high of getting this condition if you choose not to see a Dr. about your continuous heartburn over time.
You see over that year where I was popping Prilosec, I did not know that if you had heartburn that often, that you better get it checked out. Heartburn that often is NOT normal. It’s called GERD. And it’s very risky. If you do not take care of GERD, it turns into cancer more often or not.
So here are some points to be aware of:
1) Even if you think it’s funny, amusing, or you just love coffee that much, do not drink 3 mid-to-large cups a day. I try to limit myself one large a day, maybe every 2 days.
2) Do not prolong popping pills to take care of your heartburn that seems to come up every month. Go see a Dr. You are much better off getting a much stronger medication such as Nexium (which I take now), and you’re better off forcing yourself to change your habits after you find that it could be pre-cancerous or even in the cancer stage if you wait too long. Do not wait till it gets to that point. Heartburn burns your esophagus, and that burning, that consistent burning every week or two ends up eating away at it and opens it up to all sorts of problems and a major one cancer which has been proven. You don’t have to question this.
3) Try to look for low-acidic coffee for the home. If you’re like me, and you own an espresso machine, take a look at coffees such as what I picked up this weekend called Puroast Low Acid Coffee 
. I saw these guys who traveled from CA this weekend in our COSTCO store here (Chicago, IL) promoting their product. I did not know low-acid coffee even existed. Well, here you have it, and I can tell you it tastes very good. I bought a 2.5 lb bag of it for only $13 at COSTCO this weekend for my espresso machine. I don’t buy coffee if it is not really good as I’m very into coffee beans and I recommend this product. You’re talking to someone who buys Illy beans, Intelligencia, etc. and I can tell you that this does taste good if you were to purchase it over the internet without ever tasting it. These guys take their beans seriously there.
4) Try switching off with tea and coffee. Sometimes when I have that drug urge for coffee, I switch to some good Mango Tea instead. I know that I’ll come back to coffee but need to slow down a bit so I resort to tea so that I’m sipping something hot for the time being to tide me over. Sometimes tea is different and kind of nice when you’ve drank so much coffee…you’d be surprised. I’m not a tea fan but I do make sure my tea is good. Get a good fruit tea that has a LOT of flavor. Green tea is not going to do it. You’ll resort to coffee quicker than you can believe unless you drink some decent tea flavors.
5) Do not mix coffee and chocolate when you are having heartburn problems. Chocolate is also known to cause heartburn. So don’t mix the two if your stomach or other symptoms are telling you to lay off.
6) Lay off the hot Indian and Mexican foods once in a while. Give your stomach a break. Don’t try to be a tough guy all the time. Trust me, it was not fun being in the hospital for this and then having to deal with severe heartburn for the rest of my life basically. It all builds up if you are not watching your intake of acid daily.
7) Over the counter drugs are not the solution to your continuous heartburn problems. They just cover the effects but the damage still happens internally. Again, see a Dr. who can prescribe stronger medicine if needed and tell you what you need to do to live safely with this problem.
Well, that’s it. Keep on loving your coffee, but beware. Don’t go nuts with it on a daily basis. Trust me, the first time you get a real heartburn problem that does not go away, you’ll wish you applied this post to your daily life. Drinking 3+ cups a day is not cool for you no matter how cool or savvy you think you are or love coffee. I did it because I loved the taste, but it eventually did me in at that pace (hey that rhymes ;)). Heartburn is not something to mess with. It will eventually mess you up over time if not addressed by a Dr. and monitoring of your acid intake. Heartburn is one of the most overlooked health problems because people like me pad it with over the counter drugs often and think that’s all I need to do.
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Print | posted on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 9:54 PM
