Caffine addiction!

[Zacha341]

I've heard about the pop jones and sometimes have to have a small bottle of Coka-Cola, that's purported to be able to clean the grime off a old car engine. But I never buy a large bottle size... try fresh ground ginger and ginger or green tea hot. That will give the zing without the additives and sugars!

[Gannon]

This is fun...resurrecting old threads.

Hard to believe there were any I didn't chime in on...especially one on caffeine.

NPR reported a study years ago that looked at the shapes of molecules which correspond to certain 'socket' synapses. First they identified was caffeine, and they noted it didn't take that much to fill the open caffeine-neuroreceptors...and they held onto the caffeine molecules from 4 to 6 hours. The conclusion is that we all needed a little bit of caffeine-laden something in our diets for peak nervous system performance...but anything more than a couple ounces of coffee or soda was just a tax on the kidneys and bladder, making them filter out the excess.

It helped explain the wide range of conclusions from studies made on caffeine, many by the military...there was no consensus, likely because nobody used a tiny enough dose before the distracting troubles accumulated. Like most drugs, the body seems to develop a tolerance to an amazing dosage of caffeine.

And other things...

[Dumpling]

My boyfriend who was early-onset type two diabetic [[aka "MODY") used to drink
quite a bit of diet Coca Cola up until the kidney care dietitian informed him that the
PHOSPHATES in the Coca Cola were bad for him. Thereafter he took "Phoslo"
phosphate binder to reduce the amount of phosphates in the rest of his diet once
the Coca Cola was eliminated.
Quite a few Detroiters have kidneys that aren't in tip top shape. Say you like coffee,
green tea and Coca Cola equally well, but you have been drinking large amounts of
Coca Cola [[maybe to wash your blood sugar away - a urine or blood glucose test once a
year is a really good idea, to watch out for your kidneys) you will probably be better off switching your caffeine source of choice from Coke to tea.

[G-DDT]

I've heard about the pop jones and sometimes have to have a small bottle of Coka-Cola, that's purported to be able to clean the grime off a old car engine. But I never buy a large bottle size... try fresh ground ginger and ginger or green tea hot. That will give the zing without the additives and sugars!

If there was ever a blessing to be vomited up by the curse, is that I've been very health [[nut) conscious for well over seventeen years now [[yes, Sumas, as an herbalist, I know sage is good for ya', so bear with my "ghost freebasing sage memory" gag on the "haunted" thread.). I still encounter LOTS of ignorance from folks who don't understand hypoglycemia [["duh-so, that means you need to eat lots of sugar, right?"-not when you have a touchy pancreas running in third gear all the time over-reacting to the slightest presence of sugar-even if it's the ugly gobs of stored glycogen the damaged liver kicks out when I havn't been steadily eating small meals.); yet, it's given me a Johnny Depp/Count St. Germaine [[he ate lots of small meals, too, or was that Cassanova?) "aging-clock-slowed-down" effect. Still, I have to handle everything naturally, because my F-ed up kidneys can't filter artificial stuff [[I get woozey just from a standard Ibuprofen 200; I also hallucinated dangerously on Tamiflu and had suicidal streak-something almost never happens to me-that wouldn't leave me for weeks in Boston.).
Point is though: Yeah, Ginger is good for 'ya. Especially this time of year. It will keep you warm.

Oh, yeah, speaking of Boston, why do people correlate it with tea? The colonists obviously hated the stuff [[impersonating Indians, heave-hoing anything meminescent of the British----
Burns: tossing that tea without a care...for what the caffeine would do to the Fenway flounder.
Homer: Is that a fish?
Burns: It was.).
Anyway, when I was there, no one was into herbalism [[the head of a shelter, who claimed to be an activist who splashed his framed accolades all over the place, used to throw out my metal tea strainers-thought they were drug paraphernalia. How odd, for an activist, yet, I could say a lot worse for his dishonest schemes....). or tea. It was all about coffee. Lots and lots and lots [[lots!) of Dunkin Donuts coffee. Folks all zipped up, over-emotive, over-reactionary, fly-eyed, gnat-brained, and with one-inch thoughts to boot.
No, I don't believe sports drinks or 5-hour energy give you focus, energy, or clarity. When I worked at a health store, the most commonly sold item was Xenedrine, Hydroxycut, and all of the other diet supplements cranked with guarana, caffeine, and ephedrine. They were also, the most commonly returned items-folks just shouting and stammering about how the thing keeps em' up for days on end [[amphetamine psychosis-more proof speed kills) and is hurting their heart. Focus comes from disciplined abilities to shut-out the world sometimes, meditate, slow-down the bodies' functions, and lots of steady, continuous lower-diaphragm-based deep-breathing. Then you can start to think long continuous strands of ever-evolving thoughts.

[Gannon]

And all along I thought it was the cannabis.

[G-DDT]

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the enlightenment or better living through chemistry stuff. Enlightenment does come with struggle, heavy self-examination, learning to abide with things, but that is not to ever think that a chemical [[you were never born with), a ritual, some kind of gnosis, a strained and esoteric regiment, or a constant "letting go to be further initiated" will ever bring about genuine enlightenment. One of the better books I ever came across [[from Loompanics-a defunct publishing company you may find interesting) was called "Stoned Free", and it propounded that one need not surrender themselves to a chemical to get a "high" [[something all human being seek in one form or another).

Those that do surrender to a chemical are just lookin' to get "f-ed' up" or to get obliterative with their life that they obviously hate. This was obvious from some of the Nitrous Oxide-that is to say, "hippy crack"-abuse seen in many nightlife circles. Granted heroin will damage one's insides, turn them into a criminal, and ruin their world around them, but I knew some rather intelligent heroin-users who could still play music or write on the crud. Those that do Nitrous, hate their life and want their brain to be shut off-if not permanently. One can feel brain cells sizzling away from each use; that-and the seizures it can cause-quickly sobered up my niche of comrades from pursuing it any further. I would never advocate any chemical [[like say, marijuana-or in the case of folks I've known who have gone as far as snorting crushed-up caffeine or Ritalin; Heck! there's folks who like to abuse asthma inhalers just for that jacked-up cortisone rush) as a way of improvement, but if it just happened to work [[even for a short time and in a little way) for guys like Crumb, Hunter S. Thompson, and myself, then right on!

[G-DDT]

Can't help but notice that just behind beer cans [[which is quite commonly accepted), the most commonly discarded beverage container left at the side of the road is usually some zingy high-caffeine/stimulant type swill-Mountain Dew, Red Bull, Monster, Rock Star, or some sports drink [[usually because they can't be returned for deposit). Just discarded and left at the side of a busy road, quiet residential street, or on someone's lawn.

Also, since I moved to the suburbs, I've seen more and more incidents of kids buying a a bag of fast food, scarfing it, and just ditching the bag and all of it's debri-ish contents in the middle of the road [[usually near a stop sign). I've even seen fresh bags laying there in the street near a park on a night when trash cans are being put out [[fast food clutter filled bag just twelve feet from a garbage can). I would not mention this based on just one or two incidents. Try over forty in my neighborhood [["The Hills" of Dearborn) in the last two years alone.

It's an ugly tend I wish would stop.