Caffeine

My doctor said it was unnecessary, but I made a decision to give up caffeine when I got pregnant. And I've been doing very well, having cut out out entirely with the exception of chocolate. I noticed, just after I gave up coffee, that I had no attention span. I don't exactly know when my attention got better as shortly after I lost my focus, I also began feeling nauseous. That lasted about eight weeks. I've been wondering if the loss of focus was due to the loss of caffeine or due to being pregnant (and very excited and freaked out about it at the same time).

Well, Discovery Health has a series called "Truth about Food" during which they show experiments they conducted on the basis of larger experiments done by research institutions. So far today, I've learned that they have scientifically proven that "detox diets" don't help you at all, drinking 8 glasses of water is unnecessary, and a glass of wine per day is in fact beneficial for your heart.

Their caffeine study was interesting. They took two coffee drinkers and told them that for one week, one of them would be given decaf. Both people believed that they had the decaf, one of them suffering from actual caffeine withdrawl and the other suffering from a placebo effect.

I learned two things from the show. 1) the caffeine withdrawl takes about a week to reverse the effects, not three weeks like I had previously read. 2) My loss of focus was due to the caffeine.