Was I having pain?  Not exactly.  Nothing new at least.  Pain was not my motivating factor but less pain is a nice bonus.

Pressing the reset button on our biology is like returning to our “factory settings”.  Our bodies come equipped with pretty incredible default settings that keep us healthy and alive despite what we do to them.  If we can just manage to stay out of the way often enough and long enough, our bodies are perfectly capable of handling most obstacles that come our way.

In the forthcoming Volume 2 of The Everyday Pain Guide series, readers are shown 3 steps towards achieving a reset in the 3 areas of health and wellness that can be sources of pain triggers.  I mentioned these three pain triggers in the previous post which you can read by clicking here: Three Ways You Never Knew that News Can Cause Pain. 

The three steps towards an effective reset are: Release, Retrain and Reinforce in that order. The first step towards pain relief – Release – includes finding a way to return to all default settings.  This means in all three areas: body chemistry (which by extension influence brain chemistry), body mechanics and emotional coping. Spending time in this first phase is very important. 

We all like to chase relief by doing something – taking action feels like the right thing to do when we want change doesn’t it?  But unless we take time to hit “pause” first, any changes we make, might not be compatible with our “default factory settings” and therefore not sustainable.  The Release step is all about pausing long enough to uncover our individual most neutral setting possible (biochemically, biomechanically and emotionally).  With this information, we allow our brain and nervous system to start remembering that we can be pain free. 

New Year. New You?

Many people like to use January as the month when we do all sorts of different resets, trying out new healthy habits, as part of New Year’s resolution season.  Statistics show that most people don’t last past March with these changes. 

Maybe in part because I’m aware of this statistic, but also simply because of my personality, I resist moving with the masses at every opportunity and this is just one example; I don’t typically make lofty resolutions at the start of a new year. Instead, I prefer to see every day as a chance to start fresh.  That gives me 365 chances a year to “clean up my act” or just try new things. That feels a lot more do-able to me.

Mid way through January something changed for me this year and I noticed that over the previous 3-4 months I had become increasingly dependent on an afternoon coffee to “make it” through the day (!).  Throughout my life I’ve often alternated between months of drinking and enjoying coffee and other long stretches of time drinking teas instead.  This January I realized I have been on the coffee “wagon” for numerous consecutive years.  And now I find myself suddenly unable to function without it.

For my constitution and biochemical make-up, coffee provides a very intense high.  I jokingly compare it to cocaine[1] because it feels that radical and intense for me when the coffee-caffeine hits; the world looks brighter, I suddenly develop radical inspiration, optimism and confidence.  I’m a naturally optimistic person, but the effect of coffee puts a lot of extra air in my balloon. 

This coffee-caffeine “hit” is so intense that I do develop jitters and heart skips.  You would think that should cause me to back off but no, I just take magnesium citrate which helps soothe the nervous system and provides a small buffer for me to tolerate these clear signs of biological intolerance.

Taking magnesium seems like an almost sensible and healthy solution.  But the cocaine-like impact from my coffee doesn’t stop, it just lessens. As the day progresses and I’m getting things done at warp speed (which is highly reinforcing), the caffeine high is running me ragged inside.  When I get to the end of the day, my nervous system is shot but still wired, which then requires a proper “downer” to return from the high in time for sleep, and so I reach for some form of evening alcohol with dinner. 

Does any of this sound familiar to you? Maybe to a different degree, but you’re in good company if so.  It’s a very common cycle that we tell ourselves is normal and it is a part of many socially accepted rituals.  Alcohol and coffee aren’t in and of themselves bad things. In fact, some people’s genetic and epigenetic make-up allow them a greater tolerance for substances like this. I would also argue that both substances can serve as a way to tap into joy and what is more important than joy in life? But when you cannot get through a day without either of those things – that favorite “upper” followed by the “downer” of your choice – then you likely need a reset just like I did.

Give yourself a chance to release the grip of that artificial biochemical manipulation to your body clock and nervous system. Give yourself a break to rediscover your natural energy fluctuations and you might be pleasantly surprised.

Unfortunately many of us don’t have the luxury to sleep as long as we need during these resets, if it’s caffeine we’re choosing to withdraw from.  But if you have a long weekend, instead of diving deeper into the upper-downer cycle, consider being curious what your body would choose to do if you didn’t manipulate your chemistry with coffee-caffeine and alcohol.

Just say no?

It’s not as simple as just stopping. It’s important to acknowledge that you most certainly will have better success if you stop both, stimulants and relaxants, instead of just one.  Many people decide to give up their glass of wine with dinner but if they continue to ingest caffeine or sugar (if that is their stimulant of choice) earlier in the day, the body will continue to crave that glass of wine by evening.  And so we have a recipe for failure.

Additionally, on the topic of setting yourself up for success when stopping any kind of habit, there absolutely needs to be a substitution.  Studies show that we are more successful at creating new habits when we trade one behavior for another rather than simply denying, restricting or depriving ourselves of a behavior we would like to stop.[2]

You may have noticed, and wondered why, I make a point of specifying coffee-caffeine.  That’s because many other types of caffeine act differently when ingested.  Some of that may have to do with the lesser amount of caffeine in other beverages like tea, but the caffeine in tea is also metabolized differently due, in part, to the ingredient L-theanine[3].   So, if you decide to experiment with a break from coffee, it can be very helpful to find a non-coffee form of caffeine as a substitute.  (Something without sugar of course, since that is the other substance that acts on the same parts of the brain that cocaine does.)

One of the biggest benefits to reconnecting with your natural biorhythms is the pain relief you will feel in the absence of the biochemical storm that is created by this daily roller coaster of uppers and downers.

In future posts, we’ll look at how our emotions and stress level alone can actually create the same biochemical roller coaster, without any food or drink factors.  You don’t need outside substance like coffee or alcohol to mess up your biochemistry to the point of pain.  We are more than capable of working ourselves into a state of pain with just how we handle stress. 

This does not mean pain is your fault!  It means you have a lot more control over finding your way out of pain than you think.

Join me in the next post for more about how my January reset went, how long I lasted and what else had to be part of this particular re-calibration.

Check out Volume One of The Everyday Pain Guide for much more about how to think differently about all three pain triggers: biomechanics, biochemistry and emotions.

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As originally published on medium.com/@yalingliou on February 25th, 2022

[1] Daly JW, Holmén J, Fredholm BB. Ar koffein beroendeframkallande? Världens mest nyttjade psykoaktiva substans påverkar samma delar av hjärnan som kokain [Is caffeine addictive? The most widely used psychoactive substance in the world affects same parts of the brain as cocaine]. Lakartidningen. 1998 Dec 16;95(51-52):5878-83. Swedish. PMID: 9889511.

[2] https://psychcentral.com/blog/using-behavioral-psychology-to-break-bad-habits#4

[3] Nobre AC, Rao A, Owen GN. L-theanine, a natural constituent in tea, and its effect on mental state. Asia Pac J Clin Nutr. 2008;17 Suppl 1:167-8. PMID: 18296328.