Podcast Highlights:
- 03:31:22 Could my internal organs be displaced after a C-section 17 years ago or from adhesions forming after that surgery? Could visceral manipulation be good to try for diagnosis and or relief?”
- 25:59:27 Is all caffeine, the same? Coffee and tea? Does the different sugar content in soft drinks make a difference?
Transcript from Webinar:
Well, howdy y’all. We’re back again. And another at least, if you’re doing this live, it’s on another Tuesday. But who knows when you might be watching? And this is Dr. Nieters Doctor of Acupuncture and Oriental medicine.
And I’m here to answer some more questions, or at least to you… My goal isn’t necessarily always to answer questions. It’s to further the inquiry. The fact that people have an active, open sense of wonder and inquiry is really my goal. You know, every answer at best is only accurate in a moment of time.
And so when we look at answering questions that I really want to encourage everybody to never hold an answer to a question as an endpoint. It’s like science in general. It’s one of the huge problems we have. Where we allow people to look at and look into and think about science. It’s like you have some people saying, I am the science. Well, that person could not be further from a scientist.
No real scientist would never say anything like that. Or the science is absolutely proven. Science has never absolutely been proven. That’s the point of science. You get to a certain point, you know, it looks like the sun goes around the earth. And now you set out to prove that. And lo and behold, doesn’t seem to be the case. It looks like something else is happening. And so that carries you down another road. But it’s never a 100% decided issue.
If it’s truly science, because science is a shortcut. That word, that term…. But the scientific method. And the scientific method is always about being open to new ideas, to new experiments, to new studies, to new opinions, etc.. That’s what science is. So anyway, after my little rant there, I’m going to take a look at some questions that came in. And it’s great because we’re getting some really, really good questions. So keep them coming. There are a couple that are so specific to Chinese medicine that I probably won’t go into too much.
But I think that would be just not enough interest. So I’m kind of focusing on, the whole gestalt. Looking at how does East Asian medicine mix with Functional Medicine. And how does it correlate with standard Western medical theory, etc. And what basically can you do to improve your longevity. So that you’re not high on the mortality curve. And trust me, there is a whole lot that you all can do.
Okay. So I’m going to go ahead and share my screen. So today, the first topic is abdominal pain and possible adhesions. The second one. Now, this could be any kind of scar, any place. You have a scar. This could be an issue, not just the abdomen, but the question was about the abdomen. Next one was caffeine in me.
Is coffee or tea better for me? So I’m going to look at caffeine issues in general. I’m gonna look at tea, I’m going to look at coffee and a few kind of side effects, and I might get to morning hypertension, although that’s actually a much bigger topic than it might seem, and I may not get to that this week. But again, thank you for the question.
00:03:31:22
So let’s go ahead here. The question was, “could my internal organs be displaced after a C-section 17 years ago or from adhesions forming after that surgery? Second part could visceral manipulation.
I left out a word there I believe should be good to try for diagnosis and or relief?” And the answer is yes, yes and yes. Your internal organs could easily be displaced after a C-section surgery. There are adhesions forming after that surgery are very common, and visceral manipulation is one of the primary methods to fix that adhesion problem. And this is according to Western medical thought. I pulled up some studies here from the NIH, from Rochester, Center for Medicine.
Few things like that, which are very supportive of manual manipulation. And we’re seeing, fortunately, more and more of this in the Western world. Where they’re starting to recognize the incredible power of hands on treatments, of mental emotional benefits and also the physical benefits. So they don’t have to go in and do more surgeries, which are quite a problem in the long run. So visceral manipulation is highly recommended.
Okay, so the presentation, I’m making it somewhat specific to C-sections, but any abdominal surgery can cause exactly the same problems. Having your appendix remote, having a gallbladder removed, having diverticulitis surgery, hernia surgery, hysterectomy, ovaries removed, etc. Any of those surgeries open one up to having adhesions in the tissue. And any of them can be very painful and those adhesions can get worse over time.
00:05:30:16
So part of the question was 17 years later. And the answer is yes, 17 years later is absolutely a possibility. So, and you know, don’t get into too much of this. I put this stuff in here in case you want to go back and look at it.
But caesareans are just getting more and more common. There are some places like the “Farm” which probably leads the way and natural childbirth, and they were doing C-sections in about one out of 200 births. And they had one of the best birth rates safety record of any place in the world.
And they’re doing less than 1% caesareans. And here we’re looking at 33% of all births in the US. And that’s actually spreading to areas where C-sections were really not common at all. Africa, Asia, Latin America. So caesareans are going up. It’s unfortunate because there are multiple problems with caesareans, both to mom and to the infant coming down the birth canal. The baby’s exposed to tremendous number of bacteria which populate the baby’s lungs and gastrointestinal system and their skin.
And those really set them up to have a good immune system. And if they’re missing that by coming directly into the world without going through the canal, then their immune systems are compromised.
And so the studies out there are showing an increase in complications, including a lot of different things – hysterectomies, blood transfusions, etc.. And post-operative adhesions are a very common complication of any major abdominal surgery, including a C-section.
00:07:26:15
Adhesions form during healing and consist of, you know there’s scar tissue. You get cut. Your body, fortunately, hopefully creates a scar. You want to have fibrin deposits shut down the bleeding and then you want scar tissue to reestablish the tissue so that you have a close area. And so the adhesions during healing consist of fibrous scar tissue that abnormally connects internal organs or structures.
So if you have a C-section or any other surgery, you want the scar tissue. That’s critical, but you don’t want the scar tissue to attach to other organs. And that’s what happens with the adhesion.
And so this is a study by pool et al, looking at adhesions following cesarean delivery.
Again. Don’t worry about all the words here. I’m going to talk through it. But mostly it’s obvious. Again, it’s abnormal wound healing during tissue healing, a fibrin clot. So that’s the actual fibers that form. The clot is formed by a grouping, an aggregation of cells, platelets, clotting and growth factors during the normal healing process. The fiber analytic activities.
So that means “lytic,” the breakdown of the fibrin prevents the formation of fibrin deposits and abnormal tissue attachments. So that’s the normal process. You would get this fibre or limb intact activity which would break down the excess tissue. So if that fibre analysis is suppressed often by ischemia, which is the lack of blood flow, also by hypoxia, which is a lack of oxygenation. And that’s why, by the way, hyperbaric therapy is so incredible for scars and wounds. When you get into that high pressure oxygen environment, it just soaks your body with oxygen so you don’t have hypoxia. And it’s really amazing for breaking down fibrin deposits and also continuing the healing process. And so the fibre deposits, if they’re not properly broken down, will continue. They’ll continue to grow and they develop into adhesions. Adhesion, meaning you’ve got two things stuck together.
00:10:03:05
The physical trauma of surgery. You’re getting cut open and the resulting tissue ischemia. The lack of blood flow, which often happens or cutting blood vessels, is a key factor in the formation of adhesions. Others include residual blood that’s left on the site where they don’t clear it out enough.
Post-operative infection, inflammation and then foreign bodies like sutures that may get left behind. Every once in a while, they leave a sponge behind. And that’s definitely a fertile ground to create adhesions. So they have gradations of adhesions.
There are some thin ones, and they actually they’re called slimy adhesions. And those are usually very easy to break up. Dense adhesions are really tight groups of connective tissue, which makes it a lot more difficult to remove. They can still be removed, but it’s a lot more work and they can actually contain blood vessels. And the problem with those is if you surgically cut them out, they’re very likely to recur after you remove them. So it really creates a an additional problem.
00:11:15:11
So here we go. Here’s a picture. I had some actual videos of cesarean delivery, but I didn’t want anybody to vomit. So I really got a nice picture here. I think showing a cesarean now they can do a cesarean in this way, which is a bikini cesarean, or they can do it the other way. They can come down below the navel and open it the other way. And there are reasons why one or the other of those would be selected. Most of the caesareans that I see over the last 20 years are the bikini incisions.
Okay, so seven layers, eight if you include the abdominal muscles. So it’s got to go through the skin. You’ve got a scalpel cutting through there. So this is really like getting in a sword fight and losing. The same thing. Someone just sliced your abdomen open, so you got skin and then it goes through the fat than the rectus sheath. So that’s the outside coating of the abs. Your six pack. And I’m sure you all got a six pack. So that’s your rectus. And then it goes through the rectus muscle and then the abs, which are a partial step because they usually don’t cut those.
They usually separate the tissues. They can open them up and just kind of slice through some of the connective tissue, but they don’t actually have to cut the muscle. And then they go through the parietal peritoneum, which is the layer around the organs. Then they go through another layer of peritoneum, and then they get into the uterus, which, by the way, is a very thick, very strong, extremely muscular. It’s not an easy thing to cut into. So here we have a bikini scar right from the lower abdominal horizontal incisions.
And you can see here that this is indented. Now, the reason that can be indicative of a problem, if it’s flat, if it’s totally flat across there, it’s less likely to be a problem. But when it’s indented, the question is why you may have connective tissue at the bottom of the scar that’s pulling it down. It’s pulling it taut and is deforming this scar tissue. Now, this one isn’t too bad. Usually with just a little acupuncture around it, we can fix this pretty easily.
00:13:46:03
This one’s a lot tougher. This one’s a darkened scar. You can see it’s a very broad down here. There’s a lot of scar tissue that’s been developed there. These are much more difficult to break down. So what occurs is you get these adhesion formations in the lower abdomen.
So the white these are adhesions. So these are the bowels, you know, the small intestines here. And here it’s connecting the small intestine to the large intestine. So you can imagine that every time you move, it’s going to feel really weird. Particularly if you try to stretch. It’s going to literally pull on these organs and it’s going to move them into positions where they don’t really belong here. The ovaries down here, you can get the scarring there or the uterus or the bladder, any of those places.
So some symptoms, non diagnosable abdominal pain. I have run into this a lot. Can find no reasons. I palpate,, and I don’t find anything wrong. The gallbladder is fine. The appendix is fine. Their intestines in general are fine. Their stomach is fine. We do labs. Everything’s great. I’m going to send them back to their doctor to get an ultrasound or some other type of study done. Because at that point, I am suspecting abdominal adhesions and we find them. You know, several times a year of trouble standing up straight.
And that should be obvious. The adhesions pulling you down and when you go to stand up straight, you’re pulling on that adhesion, which is ripping really against those organs, a swollen, bloated abdomen. Now, if it’s swollen or bloated, after eating for a few hours, after eating, you get a lot of bloating. I’m not worried so much about that. That’s typically a yeast problem or a digestive enzymes deficiency. But if it just kind of consistently swollen or bloated, then I’m thinking maybe there’s an adhesion.
00:15:50:10
Maybe something’s blocking the intestine partially, so the stool can’t go through, etc. Pain during intercourse. If there’s are adhesions here around the bladder or around the ovaries, anywhere in here, there can be dyspareunia or pain with intercourse. A very common cause of it. Painful bowel movements. Again, if you get this adhesion here that’s connected to the well right here, it’s connected to the large intestine.
It can constrict the opening, restrict the opening or cause just general discomfort.
Secondary infertility. So couples had one child, everything went great. They’re not conceiving after a year, so all the labs are perfect. So then you’d start to suspect abdominal adhesions. So in this case, you could have adhesions around the fallopian tubes where the egg moves from the ovary right down into the uterus. That’s not uncommon at all. When I was working in China in the fertility clinics, I would see that diagnosis quite a bit. It was relatively common. Chronic pelvic pain for no explainable reason. Increased menstrual pain generally after a pregnancy. Women have less menstrual pain with their periods, but if it goes up after the C-section, then we’re going to be suspicious.
Obviously, pain or tenderness at the scar that should go away, you know, within a very short period of time, weeks to months swelling after the C-section. And then, of course, C-section, scar pain. So those are all symptoms of abdominal adhesions.
So clearing the adhesions, what do you do? Well, surgery… Problem there is if they are really severe that may be required. Particularly if there’s a bowel that’s being constricted or restricted.
However, we’d rather not go that route because in people that produce scars and adhesions, what they do is produce scars and adhesions. So if you go in there and you cut the tissue loose, they are very likely to form scars again. That’s what they do. We’re all different at how we do this.
They can do a laser to melt the tissue. That’s a little less problematic than the surgery often. But my favorites are manual therapies. It’s also the favorites of many, many of the top medical colleagues. You can do acupuncture.
I can do that with Moxa. Moxa’s burning hot herbs over the site. Or you can do it without Moxa. One of my teachers. Years ago. Brilliant, brilliant, older Chinese woman.
00:18:48:21
At the end of every single intake, she’d say “you have scars?” and I generally say “no.” And she said, “You have your appendix taken out?” And I go, “Oh, yeah, I did.” Because they forget. Everybody forgets your gallbladder taken out. Oh, yeah, I did. “Do you have a C-section?” Oh, yeah, I did.
And she would always, every single patient, treat the scars because those scars, without exception, are going to cut some of the acupuncture meridians and you’re going to get differential blood flow, you’re going to get differential qi flow.
And she felt that was a major, major cause of a variety of afflictions in our culture. I love Chi Nei Tsang and Mayan abdominal massage for internal organs and for blood flow. The research is very, very strong for how those particular modalities increase blood flow to the ovaries and to the internal organs.
And then stretching and scar therapies. So here we have some abdominal moxibustion. Moxibustion with loose moxa.
00:19:56:12
So these are balls of 12 to 16 types of herbs that are loose and they’re packed together with the fingers and then you light them on fire. Now also you can do stick moxa where you light a stick of moxa and hold it over the tissue, over the skin. You can do a needle moxa where you stick a needle in and put marks on top of it. Or you can do acupuncture with a liquid moxa that we put around it or some other form of heat.
Very, very effective. Really melts and draws a lot of healing properties to the site.
I just put this in here because it’s kind of fun. This is a Chinese drawing of the areas of the abdomen and how they’re worked on and how they affect the. You can see the stomach meridian, you see the spleen, meridian, etc.. So I just put that on for fun. Here are some references for manual therapy to the abdomen. These are all on NIH sites. And then a lot of the information on scarring I borrowed from the Clear Passage Physical Therapy group.
And so they seem to be the experts on this. And I hope they don’t mind that I borrowed from them. They’re really good information.
00:21:25:16
And this is from the Rochester Clinic. So about six weeks after surgery, after your follow up appointment, which is generally done at six weeks with the M.D., as long as in incision is well healed, you don’t want any puss or blood or anything. It needs to be healed. You can do this on your own at home for about 5 minutes a day.
So I go to the Rochester Clinic and look this up.
They have some nice diagrams if you’re going to do this and it just walks you through how you’re going to work with those scars.
And this is actually the skin, the stretching part of it. This isn’t really working directly on the scar. And it’s normal to get some pulling or burning because there are adhesions there. When you initially start stretching it now, if it just hurts, stop. Tell your doctor about it. And if you feel in an area that doesn’t move as easily, that’s probably because there’s an adhesion. Just spend a little extra time in that area and stretch the scar very slowly.
Direct scar massage. And this is as soon as this incision is closed and well-healed. And here you’re going to put the pads of the fingers right on the edge of the scar. And you’re going to stretch the scar by pushing the fingers about a half an inch in one direction. And again, if you go on their site, they have some nice drawings. And then you’re just going to move along this scar and pull on it on the whole length of the scar.
00:22:59:12
You’re going to stretch it. And then when you’re a little farther along, you’re going to do a scar lift and roll. Now, for those of you, after 17 years, this would really be the minimum. So you’re going to lift the scar away. You’re going to grab it with your index finger and your thumb. You’re going to pull it up and you’re going to roll the scar between your fingers. They say 10 to 15 seconds. The time is not so important, but roll the scar between your fingers again, moving over the entire length of the scar and keep repeating it.
And there is a source to find this if you want to do more work. What’s really a great thing to do is prevent the severe scarring, if you can. As soon as the wound closes, anyone anywhere in your body massage gently with vitamin E oil. At week six, you can add magnesium and arnica cream, which is going to move the blood and the fluids very, very good. That combination of vitamin E, magnesium, arnica and silicone strips, you can find it any pharmacy.
And you just put the strips over the scar and it’ll help control this scar formation. Orally Nattokinase increases blood flow and Serrapeptase actually breaks down fibrin deposits. And it’s an astonishing, astonishing supplement. I used a lot. I use it a lot during COVID for Long-Covid and for vaccine injury where people have microclots, and we use that to help break down the micro clots.
And it’s amazing how quickly people recover from long COVID. Take vitamin C and collagen, which will help rebuild the connective tissue. And then if you have an acupuncturist, do Chinese herbs for blood flow. If you’re concerned about an ovary or your bowels, you can do an herbal enema and that gets the herbs directly to the site. And it’s exceedingly effective. Okay.
00:25:03:08
Kathryn: And there’s a comment. Someone was able to clear their C section scars with Castor oil packs.
John: You know, I was going to put Castor oil in here and I kind of got in a hurry. Castor oil packs are great. I love the Castor oil packs for just about anything. I’ve had people use it on their neck or their glands and we do it always and our liver detoxes. And thank you for that reminder there. Fabulous for C-section scars or any form of scars. But for C-section scars, I love them a lot because they will penetrate and actually help break up the adhesions better than some other things.
So thank you very much for that reminder. So I’m going to delve in a moment.
Go to my second question and again I want to thank you for that question. I think it has a much broader application than to just C-section scars. And thank you. So I’m going to share my screen again.
00:25:59:27
And now we’re going to talk about the nectar of the gods. The question is all caffeine, the same coffee and tea, does the sugar content in soft drinks and they put in different amounts? I’m not sure what that meant Make a difference? Okay, so let’s talk about that a little bit.
You’re going to remember the most important thing. We’re all different. We are all very different. My wife’s physiology is very much different than mine. Mine was very much is very much different than my mom’s was. We all have different genetics. We have particular physiology. We are individually not a statistic. So the studies I’m going to look at here are statistical studies. They have more power when you get more and more patients involved and you can track a higher number of people.
But really what’s important is how you personally are affected. For example, I was really big. I still am on bulletproof coffee. I think it’s a fabulous idea. And so with bulletproof, you’re making coffee in a very, very healthy way. You’re grinding it yourself. You’re using particular types of beans, low mold. You’re then blending it up with some form of fat. It can either be coconut oil or butter or ghee or MCT oil, and then so that it stays together and then you drink it.
So that keeps you in ketosis because you’re burning fat still instead of switching over to burning sugar. So I love it. However, I can’t drink it all the time because it’s really hard on my stomach so I can go once or twice a week. If I go much more than that, then my stomach starts to grumble a bit. So again, we’re all different. Okay. So let’s cut to the chase. The last five research studies that I have seen on coffee indicate that coffee drinkers live longer and are healthier.
This really irritates the heck out of a lot of acupuncturists that I know. I’ve had the discussion many times where with other acupuncturists they said,
00:28:14:01
“Well, you know, the Chinese doctors were really against coffee.” I said, “Well, that’s interesting because they didn’t even know about coffee. It wasn’t introduced into China until almost 1800. So they certainly were not against coffee 1500 years ago.” And they drank massive, massive amounts of tea, there are beautiful poems and sonnets and songs written to the joy of drinking tea and how life’s actually not lived worth living if you don’t have your tea.
So I try to keep an open mind. And I said the last five studies and they were very strong. Large studies show that people that drink coffee live longer and are healthier now again, that statistically or some people it would not be good. There are some dangers, but overall huge difference and also dozens of studies. I probably have two dozen here on my computer alone that show that tea drinkers live longer and you can get reductions in breast cancer, mouth cancer, colon cancer, whole lists of things that tea drinking helps diminish. Now, dozens of studies on specific illnesses that helps eliminate it. Like I said, green tea is the single best thing to keep moisture in your eyeballs. That vitreous humor, the jelly like substance that dries out as we get older and as it dries out, we get floaters, you know, as you know, they dry out and things get dried up and we get these hard pieces that float around.
00:29:52:21
But also, when you have floaters, that means that that’s drying up and can pull on the retina. So you get more retinal problems. So tea helps eliminate all of it. And consistently in these studies, some were higher. I don’t think any were lower. You’re seeing a 25 to 30% reduction in mortality over a particular period of time and a 25 to 30% reduction in dementia risk. Those are astonishing figures. There is no drug that produces anywhere near.
You take all the drugs that have ever been made and are ever used, and you’re not going to see that type of reduction in either of those. So, you know, enjoy. So caffeine’s popularity is truly unparalleled. 80% of the world enjoys a caffeinated product daily. Of all kinds of different ones. I know people that coffee makes them way to jittery, but in the afternoon they will grab a chocolate.
And it’s just because you get that little jolt of caffeine, it’s not as strong, but it does the job. There are over 60 plant species around the world that have levels of caffeine that are high enough that they can be used as a stimulating beverage. And the caffeine content in the beverage varies depending on which product. They are the ingredients and how the drink is prepared. There are huge differences in preparation times and the heat of the water, etc. that affect how much caffeine is pulled out.
00:31:34:13
For example, a gross example, tea on average actually has quite a bit more caffeine per ounce. Then there’s coffee. But a cup of coffee will generally have a lot more caffeine, usually twice to three times as much. Because of the difference in brewing, it’s generally brewed at a hotter temperature, etc.
You’re right, you’re grinding the beans so there’s a greater ability for the water to permeate into it and get that caffeine released. Now, when caffeine, while it’s considered safe, obviously drinking too much can raise some concerns. So I have about 30 slides on how great it is and what I’m concerned. So just kind of throw that in there.
So the general safe level of caffeine… and it’s interesting. The USDA and the European Safety Authority both came up with the same numbers and they say caffeine intake is safe, up to 400 milligrams per day, 200 milligrams in a single dose or 1.4 milligrams per pound.
So a 150 pound person should be totally safe, up to 210 milligrams of coffee per day. And actually, that’s a very conservative number. Okay. So when people talk about tea, they’re often talking about a variety of things, like an herbal tea.
00:33:04:23
Well, the “all tea” that we consider tea is from one species of plant, the Camellia Sinensis. Now, different regions, you know, have different subspecies, different soil will cause different flavors, etc. in general.
When tea is picked, it’s green. It’s bright. In fact, it’s beautiful. Beautiful green. It’s very lightly steamed. And that stops the conversion. It stops the fermentation process. When you drink it, it’s brewed cooler. Usually about 175 degrees. It’s generally brewed for a shorter period of time, often about 3 minutes. Black tea is rolled and bruised and then it’s allowed to ferment.
So that fermentation really increases the caffeine availability and that is brewed longer and hotter. That’s usually brewed at about boiling 212 degrees and it’s usually about 5 minutes of brew time. Oolong is in between. It’s lightly fermented. It is brewed. It is bruised, but it is not bruised to the point that black tea is. They stopped the fermentation process earlier and it’s in-between time and heat and different oolong is recommend different times. But they are about 4 minutes and between 175 and 212, depending on the type of tea. Matcha which is very popular in Japan and has become very popular here is a powdered green tea.
You get it as a powder, you put it in a bowl. The ceremonies are very, very elaborate. I did study Japanese tea ceremony many, many years ago. It’s incredibly complex. And so it’s a powdered green tea. You put the powder in a bowl. And you whisk it with hot water and you get a very different flavor of tea that has different medicinal qualities. Now, getting coffee is going to vary in chemical content by species. The soil is grown in the climate and the brewing methods.
Yerba mate. Many of you are probably familiar with as a South American caffeinated plant. And of course chocolate has been used for centuries. There were whole cultures that only the emperors, kings, etc. and the court were allowed to drink the chocolate because it was so highly prized. And the Emperor of the Aztecs was reputed to have had about 40 cups a day of chocolate. It’s very fascinating.
And they considered that part of the source of its power.
Caffeine levels and different caffeine drinks. The average cup which is 237 mm. Millilitres, I’m sorry, which is an eight ounce cup, has about 47 milligrams of caffeine.
Green tea is contained only on average 20 to 45, although many people get more of a buzz from green tea and there are some good reasons for that. White teas are really the first picking. They’re very delicate. They’re brewed at a very short period of time. And they have a much lower caffeine content. 6 to 60 milligrams matcha. About 35 milligrams yerba mate. But 85 milligrams.
So it’s actually stronger than tea, than most teas. And I feel a big difference when I do yerba mate.
00:36:52:22
I love Yerba Mate. I’m often too lazy to brew it during the day, but I think it’s fabulous. And herbal teas. There are many of them that are marketed as caffeine free, but some of them still can have up to 12 milligrams of caffeine. And some people, 12 milligrams, they really feel it.
The average cup of coffee now. Average cup of coffee. That’s the one that you brew at home or you get at a restaurant, a typical restaurant. But 95 milligrams of caffeine. If you go in and have a 16 ounce mocha cup of tea now, it’s going to be way, way, way more than 95 milligrams of caffeine, but a regular cup of coffee like you sit down in a restaurant and at some coffee with your omelet. About 95 milligrams. So again, you can see it’s about double what you get in black tea.
You know, there’s a lot of thought that I hear that dark roast that you get more caffeine. I have not seen any studies that support it because it’s not affected much by the roasting. So that may or may not be the case. Espresso, of course, is more concentrated. A single espresso from Starbucks as well. 58 milligrams of coffee per one ounce shot. And most of those lattes and coffee chinos are made with a double shot. So they’re going to take more like the 116 milligrams.
And then we look at decaf stuff and I don’t know, I wouldn’t bother with that. It’s it’s going to give you a stomach acid with no benefit. It’s a strange thing to me anyway. The study done by the International Agency of Research for Research on Cattle Running, you can see you can read it up there, and then the Imperial College of London. And they tracked more than half a million people across ten countries in Europe, and they found benefits for longevity, whether it was caffeinated or decaffeinated.
00:38:52:10
Now, some studies have shown that caffeinated is better, but this study said that about the same coffee drinkers had a lower risk. Just put almost everything a little higher risk of stomach cancer, a little higher risk of throat cancer, and a couple of oddballs like that. But cancer, stroke, heart disease, diabetes, respiratory disease, kidney disease, way lower. One cup of coffee a day. They were 12% less likely to die compared to non coffee drinkers. And if they didn’t drank two or three cups, they went up to 18% reduced risk of death.
And this study by Masato Tsutsui. At the end, he delivered this at the American Heart Association scientific sessions. He found that blood flow increased by 30% over 75 minute period. Amongst coffee drinkers, without a significant difference in heart rate. And this is one of the reasons why there’s such a benefit to doing coffee before you work out. You’re going to get more blood flow. When that blood flow increases, you’re going to get more blood flow to your lungs.
You’re going to get more blood flow to your muscles. You’re going to be able to work out longer and harder. And this is all proven. There are tons of studies about this showing the benefits of coffee for working out and for mental acuity, etc..
00:40:24:06
Here is another study from the Netherlands showed that there was less cognitive decline amongst people who drank coffee regularly. And this one’s interesting. Cognitive decline among non coffee drinkers was more than four times higher than decline among men who drank three cups a day. Take a look at that. Just kind of stare at that for a minute. Four times higher risk among men who did not drink coffee.
That’s why I said I have about 30 pages on benefits and one on detriments.
Now, regular coffee drinkers and this was an interesting study. They found huge advantages in coffee drinkers that were 45 and older. They lowered the risk of dying by 30%. But in younger adults under 45, they did not see that increased benefit.
They 22% decreased risk of all cause mortality when they drank four cups a day. Bing, bing, bing. If they added two other cups, they got even more benefit.
Difference in the effects. Camellia Sinensis contains a whole bunch of compounds in addition to the caffeine. Epigallocatechin Galli is an amazing substance. One of the most powerful antioxidants may be the single best thing for eye health are very powerful for anti-cancer cancer, but Theanine is one of the biggies. So if you have a cup of coffee in the afternoon, you may get this jolt of energy. It’s like the adrenals are just getting switched on.
If you do tea, you’ll have a greater sense of awareness and a weakness. But you don’t get the same like, jitteriness. And that’s because DNA is a very, very powerful, relaxing, chemical. In fact, the Indian is very, very popular in the supplement fields for relaxation, for sleep, etc. So tea can cause mental arousal while causing less anxiety and nervous energy than coffee does.
00:42:45:25
And what about the sugar?
Over one quarter and this was a while back. I’m assuming it’s worse now. One quarter of U.S. teens, teenagers have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. This is crazy. Now, 50 years ago, this was unheard of. Teens just didn’t have fatty liver disease. And at that time, 50 years ago, 100 years ago, the only people that developed fatty liver disease were people that drank too much alcohol. And that’s because of the fructose in the alcohol.
The liver can’t properly dispose of it. It’s it’s burned in a completely different system than glucose is. So you you go and have a candy bar. And if it’s not made with fruit, high fructose corn syrup, it’s going to break down. You’re going to use insulin to break it down. You’re going to absorb it. If you have something with high fructose corn syrup, you don’t have the same systems to break down the high fructose corn syrup. So the fat gets stored in the liver and you get a fatty liver.
So check out Dr. Lustig from UCSF. He’s written some very powerful stuff on this, by the way. Last time I looked, a Starbucks Frappuccino had as much sugar as 10.5 Krispy Kreme glazed doughnuts. Now, that usually freaks people out. So at least get a small Frappuccino and get a Krispy Kreme doughnut. You’re going to cut down your sugar. Now, the combination is way addictive because the caffeine and the sugar works synergistically to really crank up the adrenal system and rapidly increase your energy.
The sugar is going to increase your cortisol level. The caffeine is going to increase your epinephrine and norepinephrine levels. So you’re just going to be jacked up and ready to roll.
00:44:43:21
My wife’s mentor has a fun story. He does sports medicine all over the world, and so he treats a lot of runners and marathoners. And he said he had one patient who literally read every bit of the label of everything he was going to put in his body.
I mean, this guy was uber, uber, uber careful. And didn’t put anything in it that wasn’t pure. But at the end of a marathon, he would drink two Coca-Colas because that would help him to recover faster than anything else. He had found that combination of caffeine and sugar just really, really revved them up.
Unless it’s an emergency. You got to be up all night taking care of a sick kid or you got to do something. You know where you have to be alert. Don’t mix them. Don’t mix caffeine and sugar.
00:45:38:18
And problems. I told you, I put in one page. Insomnia. And here you have the difference between fast metabolism and slow metabolism. So if I drink coffee at three in the afternoon, I’m going to have a lot of trouble sleeping. My mom used to get up in the middle of the night, make a pot of coffee, and drink a couple cups so that she could go back to sleep. She’s a fast metabolize or she goes through the caffeine very quickly. I’m a slow metabolize or it stays in my system for a very long time.
And so fast metabolism versus slow metabolism, it can make a big difference. Obviously, anxiety can be triggered. It’s again, stimulating a lot of systems in your body that are going to really pump your energy up. Probably the biggest thing for me is the vitamin and mineral deficiency. It can diminish B vitamins. So if you’re going to drink a lot of coffee, take a good B vitamin. It can also affect calcium, magnesium and potassium. So take a B, vitamin D, do some electrolytes. Eat really well and drink your coffee.
Now, one of the recent studies, to my great surprise, was on heart disease and atrial fibrillation. And the one time that I had warned my patients against drinking coffee in general is if they had a afib. Which is a heart rhythm disturbance. But in that study, it showed that coffee reduced AFib incidence. It did not increase it. So if you have heart arrhythmias, you know, if you want to experiment, drink a little coffee and see what happens.
Do you feel better or do you feel worse? Obviously, if you feel worse, stop. What are your other things that can increase or reduce headache frequency? So one of the classic causes of weekend migraines.
So caffeine causes a constriction of the arteries, so that you can get the blood moving better.
00:47:43:29
So if you drink coffee all week and you get used to it, and then suddenly on the weekend you don’t drink coffee. You sleep in, you don’t get your coffee before noon. Those blood vessels swell in a way that you’re not used to and start pressing against the nerve. So weekend migraines are often caused by stopping drinking caffeine. Many of the migraine remedies have caffeine in them to assist in getting rid of migraines.
However, some people, and I was one of them, used to drink too much, way too much coffee, and it started causing migraines. So I had to stop for about ten years. So, again, you know, there are dangers for sure. By the way, unfiltered brewing. So French press, the Scandinavian boiled coffee, those are more dangerous. And they do increase cholesterol and they don’t have quite as many positive effects. So using a filter is much healthier in general.
So enjoy. Not now. It’s too late in the day, but tomorrow. Enjoy your coffee. All right. So thank you. Thank you all. That was fun. As I said in general and again, we’re all different. Coffee is a health food. It is loaded with antioxidants. It’s one of the healthiest foods drinks for the liver. It the liver loves coffee. So if it if you tolerate it, enjoy it. Well, work on those adhesions. Drink a little coffee. And I will be back with you again next Tuesday at 3:00. Thank you.
REFERNCES:
A reliable way to predict intraabdominal adhesions at repeat cesarean delivery: scar characteristics
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/how-much-coffee-should-you-drink
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/black-tea-benefits
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/8-benefits-of-yerba-mate
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/how-much-caffeine-in-coffee
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/caffeine-in-decaf
Sugar Is a Poison, Says UCSF Obesity Expert
Dr. John Nieters L.Ac, DAOM, is an acupuncturist, Chinese herbalist, functional medicine, writer, teacher, and leader in the community. In this episode, John talks about his experience with the importance of finding your vision and purpose in life, in order to create the right goals for you.
Disclaimer: Dr. John Nieters received his Doctor of Oriental Medicine and Acupuncture degree from Five Branches. His use of “doctor” or “Dr.” in relation to himself solely refers to that degree. Dr. Nieters is a licensed acupuncturist in California. This video is for general informational purposes only. It should not be used to self-diagnose and it is not a substitute for a medical exam, cure, treatment, diagnosis, and prescription or recommendation. It does not create a doctor-patient relationship between Dr. Nieters and you. You should not make any change in your health regimen or diet before first consulting a physician and obtaining a medical exam, diagnosis, and recommendation. Always seek the advice of a physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. TheBalancingPoint.net, Alameda Acupuncture, and Dr. John Nieters L.Ac, DAOM are not liable or responsible for any advice, course of treatment, diagnosis or any other information, services or product you obtain through this video or site.
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