Dr. Oz: Caffeine Addiction
Dr. Phil talked to Tracy, who has a severe caffeine addiction. She says she’s addicted to coffee and can’t function without it. Drinking coffee is a critical part of her morning. Brewing coffee is the first thing she does when she wakes up. She’ll have 4 cups in the morning, 12 ounces with her in the car on the way to work, and drinks 4 more in the morning at work. After lunch, she has another two cups and finally, at the end of the day, she has a 12th coffee of her day.
Dr. Oz talked to a woman who was worried about her dependence on caffeine, which has caused pre-cancerous damage in her esophagus and caused her to have terrible sleep. (igor.stevanovic / Shutterstock.com)
Tracy says she feels dehydrated all day and jittery, but if she doesn’t have enough caffeine, she has stomach issues and gets a huge headache. She wants to be in control of her life instead of being controlled by caffeine.
Dr. Oz: How Much Caffeine Should We Have?
The average person should have at most 400 milligrams of caffeine a day. Tracy has 1,140 milligrams. That’s three times the amount. Dr. Oz was worried about a lot of things with Tracy, but one thing was her sleep. He sent Tracy hope with a sleep monitor and learned that Tracy’s brain only entered deep sleep 9 percent of the time. Dr. Oz said that on average, a normal person would have deep sleep 20 percent of the time.
Dr. Oz said the good news is that they know the cause: the caffeine.
Dr. Oz: Endoscopy
They did an endoscopy on Tracy and learned that her stomach acid is coming up into her esophagus and burning her esophagus. That’s not something that should be happening. The lining of her esophagus was bright red and it wasn’t supposed to be. That means her esophagus is pre-cancerous.
Dr. Oz: How To Reduce Dependence On Caffeine
Tracy said she’s tried to quit caffeine before, but it hasn’t worked. One time when she quit, just the smell of a cappuccino put her back to drinking caffeine. Dr. Oz said that he knew quitting caffeine was hard, because if it wasn’t, she would have stopped and so would a lot of other people.
Dr. Oz said he wanted to make sure Tracy really wanted to change. She said she definitely would. He said if she did, the pre-cancer in her esophogus wouldn’t necessarily have to progress any further.
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