How Does Caffeine Affect Your Hormones?(Episode 475)

Full Transcript: Episode 475

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: This is the Fertility Friday Podcast, episode number 475.

Welcome to the Fertility Friday Podcast, your source for information about the fertility awareness method and all things fertility. I’m your host, Lisa Hendrickson-Jack. I’m the author of The Fifth Vital Sign and the Fertility Awareness Mastery Charting Workbook. I’m a certified fertility awareness educator and holistic reproductive health practitioner with over 20 years of experience teaching women to connect to their fifth vital sign through menstrual cycle charting, balancing hormone health, and optimizing the menstrual cycle without hormones. I have been consistently outspoken about hormonal birth control over the past two decades and its impact on fertility and overall health because you have the right to know how your body works and how artificial hormones disrupt that natural process. I teach women’s health professionals how to utilize the menstrual cycle as a vital sign in their practices, and I host live coaching programs to help you achieve optimal fertility and health because it’s important to have healthy menstrual cycles regardless of whether or not you want to have babies. I’m also a wife and mother of two beautiful boys and a brand new baby girl. This podcast is designed to empower you to take full control of your cycles, your fertility, and your overall health. And I’m so excited that you’re here with me today.

Today’s episode is all about caffeine and caffeine consumption. I’m sharing a brand new episode in the FAMM Research Series, and I’m actually going to be talking about a study that I shared in The Fifth Vital Sign. It’s an interesting study about caffeine intake and how it impacts sleep. So without further ado, let’s go ahead and jump right in.

All right, so the study that we’re going to be talking about today, I found it to be really interesting because it kind of goes against some of the ideas we might have about caffeine, and it lines up with what I often see when I’m working with clients who decide to give up caffeine. So kind of in the reverse way, I see the opposite effect of it.

And so essentially, just to get our feet wet here, what they did in the study was instead of having the participants take caffeine or take coffee right before bed, they actually administered caffeine. They did it via a caffeine pill, so they didn’t have them actually drink coffee, but they did give them the equivalent of a cup or two of coffee in terms of the caffeine level. And what they did is they controlled their sleep environment. They had them sleeping in their facilities. They had them sleeping in dark rooms. So they really controlled for their sleep environment, and they had them sleep between a certain period of time. So essentially, they were sleeping from 11:00 PM at night to 7:00 in the morning.

And what they would do is once they woke up in the morning at 7:00, they would have them complete a bit of a questionnaire and then they would administer the caffeine at 7:10. So they essentially had them take the caffeine as early as possible, and then they did not have any additional caffeine for the rest of the day.

So we’ll get into what they found and why I found the study interesting. But there’s a few things I feel like I want to say about coffee. And I find it to be a very interesting topic. I’ve talked about it on the podcast before. It’s definitely a tough habit to break. It’s very much one of those things that are celebrated in our culture and highly encouraged, especially as a mom of young children and an infant. It’s how many of you listening have like a “powered by coffee” mug, right? It’s just ubiquitous.

And it’s certainly one of those things that is just promoted as normal, joked around about, you know, I can’t start my day without my cup of coffee. And all of this kind of, I suppose, glosses over the fact that caffeine is certainly a drug, if we can say that. You know, it certainly has a known impact on the body. And the reason that we take caffeine and drink caffeine and the reason that we have all of these kind of ideas about caffeine is because of the effect. We’re doing it often for the effect.

And it’s interesting because many of the conversations I have about caffeine often come down to, “Well, I just love the taste, I love the flavor, I love starting my day with it,” which I’m sure is also true. But if it was just about taste and flavor, we could certainly get some of that without the actual caffeine. So just something to think about.

Because as we start this off, caffeine is certainly—I don’t know if it’s so controversial, but in many ways it is controversial just because, yeah, I just feel like it’s controversial because if you were to get a bunch of people in the room and talk about it, you might get some really different opinions. And you’d certainly, if there was a challenge to kind of like stop drinking it indefinitely or for a period of time, you’d certainly get a lot of pushback. And so I know that I certainly face the pushback as well.

But the reason that we’re talking about it is ultimately because when it comes to the menstrual cycle, it boils down to the question, you know, does caffeine affect the cycle? Does it affect hormones? Can it have a negative effect on hormones? And in my experience, the answer is yeah, it can. It doesn’t mean it always is. And it doesn’t mean everybody needs to get rid of their coffee right away.

But what I find is that in supporting women who are having challenges with hormone production or challenges with their cycle or cycle regularity or whether it’s signs of low progesterone or something like that, it’s something that we should look at. If you are having concerns, if you are having issues with hormone health, and you are drinking coffee every single day or twice a day or three times a day, it is something that we have to look at.

Because one of the things that I’ve observed about coffee is most of the women who I’ve worked with over the years who drink coffee, it’s not that they have it like once in a while and it’s just this—most of my clients who drink coffee drink it every day. And so it’s more of a consistent habit. And I think when we get into that territory, which is how we usually interact with coffee or tea or energy drinks—so I’ll put caffeinated beverages there and to not just single out coffee—but it’s how we interact with it. And so again, something to think about.

And one other thing I want to say at this point in today’s episode is that I think it’s interesting to reflect on coffee as well because when my clients, if they’ve decided that they want to, you know, see if coffee is affecting them, the way to do that is to stop having it for a period of time.

And so it can go in different ways. Some of my clients will gradually wean themselves off of it, which says a lot. It says a lot. When we have to gradually wean ourselves off of something, it’s because we are addicted to it, because our bodies are dependent on it, right? And we know that if we just cut it off, we might have withdrawal symptoms.

So I don’t know about you, but if I was to stop eating chicken or something, or like if I were to stop eating fish for a week, my body doesn’t go through withdrawals. I don’t have to gradually taper down. I could just stop eating it for a period of time and add it back with no effect.

So this kind of significant and sometimes severe withdrawal symptoms that clients have when they cut out the coffee, that in and of itself should speak volumes. It should make you think. It should be food for thought that your body is so dependent on it that it could cause that kind of issue.

And then other clients, of course, will go cold turkey and typically have a really rough week or two. So the clients who decide, “Okay, I’m just going to stop,” they typically have a really, really rough couple of weeks, really difficult time, especially if they’re drinking it in the morning when they’re getting up—difficult time getting up, they don’t feel good. That does pass. That does pass. And once they get past that, they tend to feel a whole lot better, tend to sleep better, tend to have more energy.

But anything that can have that kind of effect on you, we should just be asking about. It should be something that we should be willing to talk about, willing to look at. And again, if anything can have that strong of an effect on you, then we should also recognize that it can also have an effect on your hormones and your cycle, which is what I see quite a bit.

So let’s go back to the study then. So what happened? As I had mentioned, they gave the participants the equivalent of a couple cups of coffee first thing in the morning. And one of the things that many of us do, because we don’t want it to affect our sleep too much, is we will make a point of drinking that caffeine first thing in the morning or early in the day so that it has less of an effect on our night’s sleep.

So this study then gives us kind of the best-case scenario of this, where we’re taking it first thing in the morning. And they had a whole, you know, they measured a few different things. I’m not going to go into all the detail about all the different things that they measured. But essentially, through various measures, they were studying sleep specifically, looking at the different stages of sleep, looking at REM sleep, and if, you know, drinking the coffee had an effect on the different stages and the different brain waves and all that kind of stuff. So they really did get into the weeds with this.

And one thing that’s also interesting is that they also measured the caffeine in the participant’s saliva. So they did a test an hour after they had the, you know, they took in the caffeine. And then they also tested them right before bed. So I had mentioned their bedtime was 11 o’clock and then they would get up at 7:00. And they tested the caffeine in the saliva at 10:55, so right before bed.

And that’s really interesting too, because the levels obviously of caffeine in their systems and showing up in the saliva was really quite high. They said it reached its highest point at about an hour after they consumed it. But at 10:55 PM, a full—how many hours later is that?—so many hours later, there was still some caffeine in their system. Now it was significantly lower than it was obviously an hour after, but it was still there.

And so the researchers actually hypothesized that some of the effects that they observed might have been related to the caffeine that was still present in their system before they went to sleep. So that’s something that’s really interesting that you wouldn’t necessarily know. You would think that if you drink it at 7:00 in the morning that by midnight, by 11 o’clock, it would be out of your system. So it was interesting to see that they still had the signs of caffeine.

But what they found essentially was that though the effects were relatively small—I mean, compared to drinking coffee an hour before bed—there still were effects, and they were observable and specific.

So what they said was that the total sleep time and sleep efficiency were significantly reduced after caffeine intake. And so essentially, it would take the participants longer to fall asleep and they would sleep for less, although they didn’t necessarily report that it was a problem. So from their perspectives, they didn’t necessarily—it wasn’t necessarily disruptive enough for them to notice or report that there was an issue. But they were, you know, measuring this, and they noticed it was different.

The other thing I should mention as well is that the subjects were blind to the treatment. So they were taking a capsule form of caffeine, and they didn’t know if they were getting the placebo or if they were getting the caffeinated beverages. So this was a placebo-controlled trial.

And so that is interesting in and of itself as well, because the participants may not have perceived that there was a whole lot different in terms of how they were sleeping, but their measurements—because they had them in this controlled sleep environment—were clear that the participants who had the caffeine did experience discrepancies and disruptions with their sleep.

So I suppose that is maybe not surprising given that I’m talking about it on the podcast, that that was the result. But I think it’s really interesting because it goes against what people would think—that to drink coffee first thing in the morning could have an effect many, many hours later.

And again, I think the caffeine in the saliva part is really interesting too, because again, you wouldn’t necessarily think, like, how long does it take coffee—the caffeine—to leave your body, right? But apparently, it takes longer than all day. So at the end of the day, it was still there. So maybe in order to get it down to zero, it might take a couple days, you know? Who knows?

One of the other ways that caffeine affects you and affects your hormones is an indirect effect, because when you’re consuming caffeinated beverages, they do have the effect of suppressing appetite.

And so this is something I’ve spoken about on the podcast before, because many of my clients will—and many of you listening have probably fallen into this as well—where we’re busy, there’s a lot going on, you know, we have our “powered by coffee” mugs. And so we’re drinking coffee right first thing in the morning, and that can suppress appetite.

So if you’re drinking caffeine first thing in the morning before you eat, you can suppress your appetite and get away with not eating until later. And it can be really convenient for our busy lives to do that.

And so that’s something to be aware of, because what happens is if we’re drinking—especially if we’re drinking a few cups of coffee as well throughout the day—it really can tide us over so that we’re not eating as much as we need to. And there’s often patterns. Some of us will do this and we’ll also exercise. We have fasted exercise, drinking coffee, not necessarily eating as much by the end of the day because the coffee suppresses the appetite.

And so what can happen is a bit of unintentional under-eating. And typically, then, when you shift away from the caffeine and start to really experience your true hunger cues, you end up eating an adequate amount.

And so that can have an indirect effect on your hormones if you’re under-eating, because that can lower your overall hormone production, lower the follicular quality, reduce the length of your luteal phase, lower the progesterone production in that part of your cycle. So there are some ways in a tangible fashion that this can show up in your menstrual cycle.

It can also impact fertility. In The Fifth Vital Sign, I cited a study where the women who consumed 300 milligrams of caffeine per day—so they gave them the equivalent of about three cups of coffee per day—the researchers found that these women were 27% less likely to conceive during any given menstrual cycle.

And so we didn’t really get a commentary on exactly what the mechanism is there. But nevertheless, that level of caffeine consumption, when they say a 27% less chance of conception per cycle, that’s another way of saying that it took them quite a bit longer to conceive. So if the average time it takes to conceive is four months, it took more than that. And on average, it would take longer, and so that results in the lower percent chance of conception. So said another way, it means that it could cause it to take longer to conceive than it would without it.

So I suppose the point there is just that, and to kind of sum it all up, caffeine can and does have an effect on our hormones. It can and does have an effect on fertility, depending on how much, the quantity. And certainly, the regular consumption on a daily basis can have an impact on hormones also in an indirect way by suppressing appetite.

And I’ve spoken to many clients who will say, “Okay, well, I don’t want it to suppress my appetite. I don’t want it to prevent me from having breakfast. So I’ll either have it with my breakfast or I’ll have it after my breakfast.” And that’s a good start, but I would also point out that it still has the effect of suppressing appetite. So if you’re delaying it, it can still result in you not being as hungry for lunch or things like that.

So what do we do with all this information? Does this mean that we never drink coffee? Does it mean that we have to give up coffee?

So the way I approach it is that I don’t think that there’s ever a time where we need to say across the board no one should ever drink coffee. I occasionally will have a latte that has caffeine in it, so I also like the flavor of it. But I often save that for special occasions when I actually need a bit of a boost, if I have a long drive or something and I didn’t have the greatest night of sleep.

So I mean, I’m a person. I like things too. And so I’m sharing that just to show that I’m not by any means a purist or whatever that would be. And I think that we can be reasonable.

But with that said, I do recognize that it has an effect on me. And maybe I’m just one type of person who’s quite sensitive to caffeine. So I have found in just over the years in my own life that if I consume caffeinated beverages on a daily basis, my body very quickly becomes addicted to them. And if I have caffeinated beverages two or three days in a row and then go without it, I tend to have a pounding headache, like a withdrawal symptom, shortly after.

So I suppose I’ve just seen firsthand the way that coffee affects my body. And I find it interesting, again, because if I go back to my chicken example, I don’t get a headache if I eat chicken three days in a row and then stop, right? So it’s doing something. We need to acknowledge that.

And so understanding what it’s doing to your body, understanding the effect that it has on it, being aware that it does seem to be habit-forming and our bodies seem to adapt to it in very specific ways—and I think that’s evidenced by how difficult it can be to back off of it—so I think this is something that we should talk about.

So do I think everybody needs to stop drinking coffee? No. The way I approach it is when I’m working with a client who has concerns about hormone health, and this is a factor, that I draw attention to it. Because if everything’s great and your hormones are great, cycle is great, we have no concerns whatsoever, then as you were, right? Enjoy.

But the challenge is when you do have an issue, when you do have concerns, when you are having issues with whether it’s conception—if it’s been taking a bit longer for conception to happen—or whether you have concerns about your hormonal health, whether you have issues with your cycle, you’re worried about low hormones or hormone imbalances or PMS symptoms or, you know, on and on, but hormone stuff. That’s when I think we should look at it. We should be able to put it on the table when we have concerns. And we shouldn’t assume that that could have nothing to do with it. Because from what I’ve observed, it absolutely can.

And so to wrap up, I think, is just to kind of reiterate some of the interesting things I’ve observed over the years. Typically, if caffeine is—the recommendation is to kind of think about reducing or stopping. So, you know, switching to decaf or switching to herbal tea or getting rid of the energy drinks, right, whatever it is. Typically, it’s for a reason, right?

And the reason may be that there’s not enough food consumption happening. Maybe it’s suppressing appetite, it’s taking over, it’s become the breakfast—like coffee for breakfast type of thing. And so maybe we’re doing it for a strategic reason so that we can really get that breakfast in in the morning so you feel hungry at the time.

Maybe it’s because of an issue with hormones and we’re looking to see if this is going to improve the overall cycle, the hormone profile, the luteal phase, the quality, quantity, length, and all that kind of stuff.

The consistent response I tend to get is that, “Wow, I’m sleeping so much better.” After the first rough week or two of the withdrawal symptoms and all that, once that’s over, there’s often just these massive light bulbs that go off for my clients who’ve done this. And it starts with having better sleep, sleeping through the night, having a deeper sleep than they have in a long time, even getting more hours that they can sleep in a row.

I’ve had clients who usually wake up a couple times a night to find that when they give up coffee, they just end up sleeping for longer stretches and wake up feeling more refreshed. So it’s interesting because that wasn’t the reason typically for them to go off of it. It typically wasn’t. That wasn’t why they did it. But it’s just very commonly a thing that happens.

Again, I found the study to be really interesting. I wanted to share it with you today because it just shows a couple things I feel like that mess with the narrative, right? The narrative of like, “Oh, I just drink it early. It won’t have an effect on me if I do it early.” And the study challenges that because it shows that these participants did have an effect. It was definitely a lower effect than what they would have had if they drank it right before bed. But there was still an effect, and there was still caffeine—I should say—in their system. Even at 10 o’clock, 10:55, at night, there was still caffeine present. It had not all cleared.

And the researchers suggested that potentially that was why they still continued to see those effects afterwards. Because even during the course of the day, their systems had not cleared it.

I think this is a good place to wrap. I feel like I’ve given a lot of food for thought. I will be curious what your thoughts are on this topic—if you love your coffee and are not phased by any of this information, or if you have been wondering about what you should do if coffee could be having an effect.

As always, until next time, be well and happy charting.