Monday, July 16, 2007

Coffee and Water

I'm a proud coffee addict. I've actually recently gone way down on coffee (and sugar) intake - my doctor discovered that my cortisol levels are very low and started supplementing it and giving me general adrenal support supplements. (Note: this is why I have to go on the elimination diet - some of the symptoms of low adrenal function are similar to low level allergy reactions and testing adrenal function is slow and expensive, so it's easier to monitor my condition if we make sure that there aren't any allergy symptoms muddying the waters.) I'm now down to one to two cups a day (from something like 12.) However, I really like the taste of coffee, so it would be very easy to drink more. At any rate, my forthcoming prescribed diet calls for no coffee or tea and only herb tea without citrus (which rules out my favorite herb teas too.) Giving up that last cup or two is going to be hard though. I am allowed to have some of the coffee substitutes (Cafix, Inka and Roma), but while I don't mind hot grain beverages, they just aren't satisfying in the same way. I'm planning to drink chickory, which my local grocery sells in a slurry that you just add to hot water, because even though it's not the same as coffee, the bitterness and strong flavor satisfy some of the same desires.

The diet also calls for using only spring or distilled water for all drinking and cooking. I mostly drink filtered water anyway and probably should only drink filtered water since I'm allergic or sensitive to several metals (gold, nickel, rhodium, and mercury) and know that I can have problems from water exposed to metals I'm allergic to. For instance, if I regularly drink coffee made using a gold filter, I become super sensitive and any skin contact with any of those metals results in contact dermatitis immediately (usually it takes a day or so of continual contact.) I'm a little suspicious about the effectiveness of my drinking distilled water to avoid allergy issues because I've been to the local water distillation plant and pretty much everything is stainless steel (nickel mixed with steel.) More importantly, it tastes horrible! However, I just found out that delivery of my favorite water, Earth2O, is relatively inexpensive (i.e. less than I normally spend on water and coffee out of the house in a normal month.) The only downside is that I have to sign up for a full year. So I'm going to try that and I'll have to get used to filling and carrying my own water. I'm not sure that is enough for cooking too, but maybe I'll try distilled for that. This kind of feels like overkill to me, but I guess if it works, it's worth it.

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