In order to understand what the symptom of climate change is trying to tell us, it’s essential we understand that what’s happening to the planet is happening to us. The macrocosm is a reflection of the microcosm—our warming planet is a mirror of our own individual and collective condition. Just as our assumptions about the world and our lives help warm the planet, what we ingest can also feed the fires of climate change.
In Chinese nutrition, substances we eat and drink are categorized based on their qualities. Rather than talking about things like vitamins and minerals with Western nutrition, Chinese medicine uses terms coming from nature to describe food. For example, some food is considered hot, some cold, some drying, some moistening. Some food brings energy up-and-out, some brings energy down-and-in. Mirroring and feeding our philosophical overemphasis on Yang is our regular ingestion of a hot, very stimulating substance—coffee.
Just because something is commonplace does not mean that it’s healthy for us or the planet. Especially with our country and culture so out of balance that it’s rapidly overheating the climate, many things that seem “normal” are in fact pathological. The amount of coffee we drink is one example. Working with many people who drink coffee reveals a clear pattern in its effect on our Qi. Coffee overstimulates the whole body, and its heat is of a nature that can be difficult to clear.
Many people who drink coffee are looking for a pick-me-up, especially in the morning. One basic reason for this is that so many of us are, at a very simple and very basic level, tired. Being tired in our overly stimulated, too-busy world shouldn’t be surprising as working too much, being entertained too much, buying too much, and traveling too much wears us out. Rather than running on the fuel of Qi, many of us are running on the fumes of heat.
While drinking coffee might seem like a quick and easy fix, it doesn’t really provide us what we are looking for. Just as shopping, being busy, and constantly moving around don’t provide us with any lasting satisfaction, hot stimulants don’t give us lasting strength. When we’re tired, part of the remedy can be to increase the amount of Qi we have. Coffee does not provide us with this energy; instead, it gives us overstimulation.
Part of being amped up on stimulants like coffee is that too much energy is going up and not enough energy is going down. In terms of Yin and Yang, this is too much Yang—too much up—and not enough Yin—not enough down. As discussed in chapter 3, this is the very same dynamic as climate change, where the planet’s heat and Yang are increasing as its coolant and Yin are decreasing. While we may feel more awake as a result of coffee bringing more blood and Qi to the brain, there is an unrooted quality to its effects. The way that coffee works is by strongly encouraging our Qi to rise upward. With the understanding that things are interconnected, we see that if we ask our energy to ascend abruptly, the balance of our descending energy can become compromised, leaving us overstimulated and ungrounded.
Another way to understand the difference between having an abundance of Qi and being overstimulated is to consider the quality of the energy. Abundant Qi produces the sensation of strength and clarity and simultaneously a feeling of peace and relaxation. When we drink coffee, we may feel strong and alert, but we are also likely to experience other things as well. We might feel agitated, restless, anxious, and unable to sit still and relax. If we drink coffee frequently, we might even feel these things with such regularity that it seems par for the course. We might assume that the effects of being overstimulated are an acceptable or even an inevitable part of having enough physical strength and mental clarity to get through the day. But just as there is nothing inevitable about a warming planet, there is nothing inevitable about being amped up.
Not much is written about coffee in Chinese medicine. This lack of information is particularly interesting considering that thousands of substances have been discussed in great nuance and detail in herbal medicine and nutrition over several thousand years. This includes substances from all over the world, from common plants like dandelion and burdock to more unusual things like deer antler and gecko. Historically, it seems that coffee was not considered useful as a food or medicine and was simply not worth writing about.
Well-known contemporary Chinese medicine practitioner and author Bob Flaws does write about coffee in his Chinese nutrition book The Tao of Healthy Eating. Author, editor, and translator of over sixty books on Chinese medicine, Flaws describes coffee as warming and upthrusting, converting our deep reserves of energy into short-term stimulation. As a diuretic and laxative, it can also drain Qi out of the body through an excess of elimination. Its overwarming quality also contributes to heat in the Stomach and Intestines.1 In my clinical experience, the overheating quality of coffee often spread from the digestive system to other organs, contributing to inflammation throughout the body.
In addition to coffee’s heat, my clinical experience demonstrates that it is also damp. To understand Chinese medicine’s concept of dampness, think about phlegm. It’s something sticky and often heavy that clogs things up and slows things down.2 While heat is an excess of Yang, dampness is an excess of Yin. When you have a stuffy nose, for example, dampness and phlegm are obstructing your breathing. The oil on top of a cup of coffee is an indication of this dampness, and it doesn’t appear just in the throat or Lungs, but can be anywhere in the body.
While the heat of coffee is stimulating and pushes things upward, the dampness slows and pushes things down. Together, these two effects create what Chinese medicine calls damp heat. To understand what Chinese medicine means by this term, think of a hot, humid summer day. The temperature is high and the air is thick and heavy. The heat creates stimulation, but the humidity weighs us down and makes us feel lethargic.
Dampness is the accumulation of too much moisture, a condition in which the potentially cooling and cleansing effects of our internal fluids have instead become imbalanced. As it’s an accumulation of fluids, and as fluids are Yin, dampness is a Yin condition. Yin conditions tend to sink downward, just as Yang conditions such as heat tend to rise upward. Coffee’s dampness—its Yin—can trap the heat—the Yang—that coffee puts into the body, encouraging the Yang to linger.
For anyone hoping that the stimulation of the heat is offset by its dampness, there’s bad news: two pathological influences don’t create balance. Instead, they create imbalances that can become layered on top of each other, making each more difficult to resolve. Dampness as an excess of Yin and heat as an excess of Yang can create real turmoil, in the digestive system in particular. The Stomach and Intestines can have a hard time trying to sort out and get rid of this simultaneous excess of Yin and Yang.
A helpful and instructive image of dampness trapping heat is that of a wet blanket on a bonfire. You can put the blanket—the dampness—on top of the flames—the fire—and the flame may go down, but the heat from the embers can linger. As it is heavy like a wet blanket, the dampness from coffee will often push the coffee’s heat into deeper and lower parts of the body, particularly the abdomen.
Retaining both dampness and heat internally is like being outside on a hot and humid day all the time. Just as the humidity can make the high temperature feel much worse, dampness can magnify the effects of heat within us.
To continue exploring the effects of damp heat, let’s look at another understanding of heat in Chinese medicine. Chinese medicine cites summer heat as the likely culprit in cases of heat stroke.3 As the term suggests, summer heat stroke happens when we are exposed to too much summer sun and heat for too long. One of the contributing factors is high humidity: the extra moisture in the air during a humid day coats the skin and prevents us from sweating out the heat. Similarly, internal dampness can trap heat internally, preventing it from being cleared out of the body.
In describing the history of coffee’s use, Flaws reports that when coffee was first introduced into Europe,
there were prohibition movements and laws based on the recognition that coffee is powerful and not a wholly benign drug. . . . Its use is not very wise. It is my belief that if coffee were to be introduced to the West today as a new discovery, governmental agencies, such as the FDA in the United States, would restrict its use as a controlled substance. . . . except as a medicinal and in cases where the use of speed is warranted knowing full well the risks it entails, I believe coffee has no place in the diet of those hoping to be healthy. It is one of the few foods that I unequivocally deny to my patients.4
Clearly, Flaws’s picture of the effects of coffee isn’t pretty, especially considering its ubiquitous use in the United States. In a more contemporary, Western view, coffee is often presented as an energizing drink that has lots of potential health benefits.5 However, what Western medicine describes as a possible benefit comes with a long list of potential problems from its overstimulating nature. From what Flaws writes and from my experience in the treatment room, it’s clear that coffee is one of the most pathological substances we regularly ingest. The imbalance it helps create not only affects us personally, but it also contributes to our collective overstimulation, which in turn fuels climate change. Part of what drives so many of us to keep going, far beyond what the planet can sustain, is overstimulation from coffee.
Because everyone is a unique individual with a unique balance of Yin and Yang, we’ll all have a somewhat different response to coffee. My clinical experience, however, is that coffee clearly introduces a large amount of heat, which we in the West call inflammation when it manifests itself physically and overstimulation when it manifests itself mentally and emotionally.
For many of us, drinking coffee can produce a long list of symptoms. My experience in the treatment room suggests that the hot, upward-rising nature of coffee can weaken our descending energy. This excess Yang and lack of Yin energy can contribute to, or create, a wide range of symptoms, including:
• anxiety
• racing thoughts
• insomnia
• disturbing dreams
• headaches (especially migraines)
• acid reflux
• irritable bowel syndrome
• a wide range of stomach and intestinal symptoms
• night sweats and hot flashes
• fibroids of all kinds, including uterine fibroids
• growths of all kinds, including tumors
• a wide range of skin conditions including eczema
• arthritis
• a wide range of pain conditions, including fibromyalgia heart palpitations
• excess anger and aggression
• dizziness and vertigo
• lower-back and leg weakness and pain
• a lack of rooted energy in general
In fact, all chronic and acute conditions that involve heat from the Chinese perspective or inflammation from the Western perspective are likely exacerbated by coffee. The good news about this long list of symptoms is that I have seen all of them improve or go away completely with the elimination of coffee as part of Chinese medicine treatments.
One example of the lasting effects of coffee was the experience of a woman I’ll call Marsha. She came into our clinic with a wide variety of symptoms, including insomnia, anxiety, and fatigue. During our first appointment, she described how most nights she was only able to sleep a few hours. She talked about how, in the middle of the night, she would wake up with her mind racing and be unable to fall back asleep.
Not surprisingly, she woke in the morning tired. Marsha also described how here fatigue lasted throughout the day and how she often felt pressure in her chest that accompanied a sometimes severe sense of anxiety. This anxiousness had gotten to the point where it was significantly affecting her work and her interactions with her family. The anxiety could come on quickly and, at its most severe, she had to be by herself and avoid all contact with other people.
As is common in our clinic, we talked about how the food we eat and the beverages we drink can contribute to our health and our sickness. And, as is often the case, we talked about how the stimulating nature of coffee was contributing to her internal condition. After several months of acupuncture treatments, taking herbs daily, and diet and lifestyle change, Marsha was feeling much better. She was sleeping soundly through the night and her energy was much improved. Her emotions were also much better, and the infrequent anxiety she did experience was much less intense and passed in a few minutes.
Marsha was coming in for treatments about once a month when I took her pulse and felt a dramatic increase in heat. I asked her if she had increased her exercise or had more stress in her life, as both can increase heat. After she said no to both, I asked if she had started drinking coffee, and again she said no. I continued to feel her pulses and asked her again about coffee, and she paused and with a somewhat startled look said, “I only had one cup of coffee about a month ago.”
The fact that I could very clearly feel in Marsha’s pulse the heat from a single cup of coffee a month after she drank it speaks not only to its very stimulating nature, but also to how it lingers in the body. As is common in many people who drink coffee, the heat and dampness were accumulating in Marsha’s Intestines. As is part of its job, the Large Intestine in particular was trying to clear things out, but the dampness was affecting elimination. As a result, both heat and dampness were lingering there.
To provide some context, it’s not that a substance that is hot is necessarily bad. Just as Yang isn’t inherently bad even in our era of climate change, a drink that lifts our energy upward is also not inherently pathological. Chinese herbalism has a long history of using warming herbs that enliven the Qi. For example, ginger and cinnamon bark are both considered hot, have a long historical use, and continue to be used regularly today in clinical practice.6 As with the larger understanding of Yin and Yang, the issue is one of context.
In my clinical experience, addressing both the Yin and Yang together is usually the most effective approach, especially in our overheated country. As we talked about earlier, Yin and Yang are best addressed together because in the view of Chinese medicine, the Yin is the basis of the Yang. In other words, without enough Yin, you can’t have adequate Yang. A common analogy for Yin’s relationship to Yang is an oil lamp. The oil itself is the Yin, and the flame is the Yang. Without enough oil, the flame can’t burn brightly. And when the Yin of the oil is gone, the Yang of the flame goes out.7
The issue with the coffee we drink is the context. The first part is that we drink coffee on its own, without a balance of other more Yin, cooling, and descending herbs. The second is that we live in a time when our lives are so amped up from producing things, buying things, and moving around that we are rapidly warming the whole planet. In our era of climate change, part of the medicine we and our planet need is less heat, not more. Regularly ingesting a hot, stimulating substance while living in an overly busy and overstimulated culture adds fuel to the fire. While eliminating coffee from our diets on its own isn’t likely to address climate change, it’s certainly an important step in the right direction. The third part is the amount of coffee we drink. As we’ll see a little later in this chapter, we in the United States drink an enormous amount of coffee—billions of cups each year.
At this point, I’ve spoken to several hundred patients in the treatment room specifically about the effects of coffee. From their responses and questions, I can guess what some of you are thinking.
You might be saying: But I heard that coffee was good for you. Coffee is clearly stimulating and does increase blood flow to the brain and other areas. It can provide a lift of energy, but many short-term fixes come with long-term costs. In addition to this heat, coffee is also damp, which can trap the overstimulation and make it harder to clear from the body. The excess rising Yang energy of coffee can also compromise our descending Yin energy, which is the very same dynamic happening to the climate. Just as the planet is warming as its ability to keep things cool and stable decreases, our bodies become overheated and inflamed as their ability to cool themselves is impaired. For us individually as for our planet, coffee causes a host of heat-related symptoms.
Some of you might be thinking: Well, if coffee is hot, then drinking iced coffee will help cool it down. In talking about the characteristics of food, Chinese medicine is describing the food’s inherent properties, which are different from its physical temperature. Putting ice in a cup of coffee does not transform its fundamental nature; what it does do is make it more difficult to digest. When a food or drink is below room temperature, the Stomach first needs to warm it before it can start digesting. The extra Qi that this warming requires means there’s less available for digestion, making the food-to-energy process less efficient.8 As the digestive system gets bogged down from the cold, dampness is generated. One common metaphor in Chinese nutrition is that the Stomach is a cooking pot that needs to be maintained at a warm temperature to work effectively. The cold of ice in coffee can decrease the warmth that the body needs to maintain effective digestion, potentially creating more dampness.9
You might be thinking: I drink decaf, so that makes it okay. As with putting ice in coffee, removing some of the caffeine does not change the coffee’s basic nature. Regardless of the particular level of caffeine, coffee is still coffee, which is hot and damp. In many cases, the chemical processes that are used to remove the caffeine add toxicity. But even if a more natural, water-based process is used, from a Chinese medical view, the nature of coffee doesn’t change with its level of a particular chemical.
Another common response is: I don’t feel good when I don’t drink coffee. A major reason we drink coffee is that we’re tired, and removing coffee’s very stimulating effects can make us more aware of what’s going on. In our era of a rapidly warming and destabilizing climate, it’s essential that we see the situation clearly, both for us and for our planet. Just as there is a long list of issues associated with drinking coffee, there can be a long list of symptoms associated with stopping. These include headaches, constipation, upset stomach, fatigue, lack of mental clarity, irritability, and cold sweats.
The good news is that acupuncture and herbal medicine can be very helpful mitigating or eliminating these symptoms. Not only can there be a relatively easy transition with the help of Chinese medicine, but people often quickly realize that they have more energy and clarity soon after stopping. The process of looking clearly at our lives involves not only considering what we are willing to do, but also considering what we are willing to do without. In addition to its relevance to our own well-being, addressing our use of coffee to keep going during our era of overbusyness has real, global importance.
Some people think: I like the feeling of being “up” from coffee. That “up” feeling is the coffee’s heat. This overstimulation mirrors the heat of climate change. Part of what coffee provides is a way to avoid actually experiencing our levels of Qi. In our era of constant demands and distractions, it’s not surprising that so many of us are drawn to the Yang of being up rather than the Yin of being down. But as the Yin-Yang circle shows us, Yin and Yang are interconnected. It’s the down of Yin that creates as well as balances the up of Yang. Without the downward, Yin feeling of rest, sleep, and feeling tired, we can’t sustainably create the up, Yang feeling of strength and power.
Some of you might be thinking: I put a lot of milk in my cup, so I’m not drinking too much coffee. From the viewpoint of Chinese nutrition, anything more than an occasional small amount of milk can create dampness. For many people, too much dairy creates phlegm in the nose and Lungs. Not only can this dampness be in the respiratory system, but it can occur throughout the body.10 As coffee can also contribute to this phlegm, adding dairy to coffee can exacerbate its ill effects.
Maybe you’re like some people who have come to our clinic and say, I just like the richness of coffee. Luckily, there are many other rich drinks that don’t have the same heat- and damp-producing effects as coffee. As we’ll discuss a little later, well-steeped dandelion tea can be dark and rich and can help clear out the heat and damp of coffee.
Maybe you think, I like the hot drink in the morning and the ritual of making it. Warm, cooked food and drinks help promote healthy digestion, and a morning ritual for starting the day can also promote health. However, having these include coffee is not particularly healthy.
Some of you might think, I’m supporting socially responsible companies when I buy fair-trade coffee. While buying fair-trade products can certainly be better for the people who grow it and for the planet, coffee remains a very stimulating drink. It’s not very likely that we’ll be able to address the root causes of climate change if we continue to be overstimulated internally. There are lots of other thoughtful, socially responsible drinks to choose.
Having worked with hundreds of people who have stopped drinking coffee, I realize that it is not always an easy process. If you want to stop or at least give it a try but are having a hard time, my recommendation is to find a good Chinese medicine practitioner. Rather than creating overstimulation, acupuncture and herbal medicine can provide what many of us are looking for when we drink coffee, namely Qi. A well-trained practitioner can also help clear out the heat and dampness that has likely accumulated and help replace it with physical strength and mental clarity.
Not only is coffee overheating us individually, it is a dietary contribution to our warming planet. Once again, what is happening within us is being mirrored in our culture and in the climate—the microcosm is a reflection of the macrocosm. Even if it’s well-intentioned, being amped up still means that you’re amped up. Drinking coffee to fuel your attendance at the next big climate rally is the same energetic condition as drinking coffee to fuel the pursuit of buying or selling the next big thing. Depending on your perspective, you may think that one is more important than the other. But the nature of coffee is the nature of coffee, which is hot and stimulating.
When you’re overstimulated from heat, you can feel compelled to keep doing things. It can feel impossible to sit still or take a break because your internal condition is telling you, “Keep going!” You don’t have to be a practitioner of Chinese medicine to recognize the effects of coffee. You can see the change in people as they drink it. They often get redder in the face, talk louder and faster, move around more, and become more assertive. Often their voices get louder and sometimes they start to shout. Many times, if someone has two or more cups relatively quickly, you can see these changes right away. While none of these responses necessarily indicates a problem—there are people who could use more of all of these things—they do show the very stimulating nature of coffee.
With the understanding that our climate is warming as a consequence of our too-busy culture, we can see how coffee contributes to our individual and collective pathology. This is particularly true given how readily available coffee is and how normal drinking it might seem. You can go to restaurants of all kinds and get coffee with breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You can go to work and get coffee. You can go to the church supper and get coffee. You can go to an environmental conference and get coffee. You can even go to the gas station or the bank and get coffee.
To provide some context for how much coffee we drink here in the United States, let’s look at some numbers. By 2012, Americans consumed a staggering 450 million cups of coffee each day, which translates to about 150 billion cups yearly.11 Think about that for a moment—150 billion cups of coffee each year. That’s 150 billion cups of hot, overstimulating coffee in our overstimulated country—150 billion cups of coffee as glaciers are melting, forests are being cut, and methane is bubbling from the ocean floor.
According to the digital magazine Food Product Design, eighty-three percent of U.S. adults reported they drank coffee in 2013, and daily coffee consumers remained at sixty-three percent of the adult population.12 According to the U.S. Census website, the total estimated U.S. population for 2013 was about 316 million people, and a little under thirty percent of those people are under age eighteen, meaning about seventy percent, or about 220 million, are adults.13 If eighty-three percent of these 220 million adults drink coffee, that leaves about 183 million adult coffee drinkers. Dividing 150 billion cups of coffee by 183 million people shows us 820 cups of coffee per adult drinker each year—820 cups of coffee as our planet heats and destabilizes and as we overemphasize doing and consuming more.
When so many people drink so much coffee, overstimulation can become the new norm. But just as overemphasizing the Yang in how we live our lives disrupts environmental sustainability, continuously ingesting a hot, stimulating drink disrupts personal well-being. With so many of us drinking so much coffee, it can seem normal to be unable to sit still. We might think it a sign of productivity to feel compelled to go from one thing to the next or to multitask. But in all likelihood, all that these activities and compulsions indicate is heat.
So what can we do other than continuing to be overstimulated by coffee? A good substitute for the heat and damp of coffee is green tea. While green tea contains a moderate amount of caffeine, it moves energy down as well as offering a mild lift. While green tea does enliven the mind and move our Qi, its nature is cooling and drying.14 As a result, over time its cooling nature can help clear out the heat in our bodies, and its dryness can help drain out the damp that our coffee consumption has produced. There are many high-quality, organic, ethically grown forms of green tea that can be substituted for fair-trade coffee.
For those of us who like a rich drink, a good substitute available from a source that is more local than both coffee and green tea is dandelion root. Yes, it’s the same dandelion that grows in your yard, at the park, and in the parking lot. Rather than seeing it as a weed and a nuisance that should be pulled out or poisoned with herbicides, Chinese and Western herbal medicine have long valued dandelion.15 When simmered over a low heat for a few minutes, it becomes a rich, strong-tasting tea with the pleasant bitterness many of us enjoy in coffee.
In one of the many ironies of our era, we spend a great deal of time and money trying to get rid of a plant that is good medicine for us and, by extension, for the planet. In addition to clearing heat and draining dampness, dandelion is also very effective at clearing toxicity, including the poisons that are applied to try to kill it. A widely used Chinese herbal text has dandelion in the section on “Herbs That Clear Heat and Relieve Toxicity,”16 and a well-known Western herbal book similarly describes it as promoting detoxification.17
Dandelion root can be bought dried or in tea bags, but for those of us interested in living a connected and sustainable life, why not go out and pick your own? As best you can, make sure that the area where you’re harvesting it is as far as possible from major sources of pollution such as roads, manufacturing, agriculture, or other people’s lawns.
Any time that you can find dandelion, you can harvest the roots. Spring and fall in particular are good times to harvest, as the energy and nutrients of the plant are most concentrated in the roots, while some of the leaves are still available for identification. You can also harvest dandelion in the winter if you live in a place where you can find enough of the plant to locate the roots. In the summer, more of the energy of the plant is above ground in the leaves, stems, and flowers. You can harvest the roots at this time of year as well, though the cooler and darker months are preferable.
Use plant identification books or someone’s help to make sure that what you have is dandelion root, and then wash it well, making sure that all the dirt is removed. Next, cut the root into small pieces, about half the size of your fingernails, and place it in on a plate in a warm, dry place away from direct sunlight. Depending on the warmth and humidity, in a week or two the roots should be dry enough to make tea. For one cup of tea, bring about twelve ounces of water to boil, reduce the heat to a simmer, and add about a tablespoon of dried dandelion. Keeping the lid on the pot, cook for ten to twenty minutes, depending on the potency and taste you desire. Strain it and you have a warm drink that is rich and bitter like coffee, but helps to clear out heat and dampness.18
In addition to the cooling effects of dandelion tea for our bodies, being able to harvest it ourselves helps cool the planet as well. Unless you live in a tropical place like Hawaii, the coffee you’re drinking is being shipped thousands of miles, which is contributing to climate change. Even if it is being grown organically and traded fairly, coffee has a warming effect on the planet from the greenhouse gases associated with getting it to us. And even though green tea is cooling by nature, it warms the planet, as almost all of it is grown in Asia and shipped thousands of miles. Harvesting and drinking our own dandelion tea helps cool us down and limits greenhouse-gas emissions as well.
Another benefit of dandelion tea as compared with coffee is that making dandelion tea provides an opportunity to connect directly with nature. We might like the jolt of caffeine that coffee provides. Or we may prefer the more subtle lift of green tea. But both pale in comparison with the lasting effects of eating and drinking wild food and medicine that we harvest ourselves. As our overemphasis on the new and the international warms our bodies and our planet, returning to the old and very local of gathering wild plants is part of the medicine we need. Rather than drinking something hot from a far-off place, try something cooling and very local like dandelion. It can be good medicine for you and for the planet.
Just as our assumptions about our lives contribute to global warming, so does what we eat and drink. Just as being busy continuously and constantly having new things fuels the fires of climate change, so does the enormous amount of coffee we drink each year. The amount of coffee we consume in the United States, and the amount of overstimulation it creates within us, is a reflection of the level of climate heat that is rapidly destabilizing the planet. If we’re going to address the climate crisis and where it’s coming from, it’s essential that we understand that climate change is not only happening in the world around us—it’s happening within us as well. And coffee is a major source of unsustainable fuel for our internal fire.
In addition to the long list of symptoms we talked about earlier, part of the importance of eliminating coffee is that its overstimulation can also compromise our deeper reserves. In our era of climate change, it is of essential importance for our individual and collective health that we understand that too much stimulation weakens the foundation of our well-being. In particular, the upthrusting nature of coffee can compromise our root strength, including what Chinese medicine calls the jing.