Does anybody else get sweaty hands and feet after drinking coffee? I do, and it is a real pain in the winter... (no central heating here... 10C indoors!).

I'm taking a herbal medicine class now, which started me thinking that there ought to be some other plant which could reduce this effect. I'm trying ginger soup/tea now, with some promising results, but need to do more experimenting to say for sure.

Henry

ginger soup/tea is hot in nature. You want something that is calming try shell fish or add ground deer horn to your soup.
treshell

treshell wrote:ginger soup/tea is hot in nature. You want something that is calming try shell fish or add ground deer horn to your soup.
treshell

Hi treshell, thanks for your suggestion. Do you mean 'calming' as in 'calms liver qi'?

I'm finding that the ginger helps with the cooling effect of the coffee- the coffee doesn't make me warm, it just makes me sweat, then I get cold... but two mugs of ginger soup yesterday left me with a dry throat, so I'm adding some gan cao (licorice) to it today... tastes great!

If you are interested, here are a couple links about coffee from a Chinese medicine perspective- by Subhuti Dharmananda or by Ryan Mader.

Hi Jon, it's nice to meet some other CM folks! Funny to do so on an espresso site

I don't find that the 'kidney* yin vacuity' pattern fits me. Actually my textbooks haven't been much help with this (they are meant more for the kind of patients you'd see in a hospital), which is why I'm trying to go with my own observations rather then theory.

On the first site I linked to above the author recommended taking bai shao (peony root) so soften liver qi, the idea being that coffee (similar to chai hu/bupleurum) dredges but doesn't smooth liver qi, which for some people could cause spleen vacuity symptoms, for example. I'd like to try this, but if I recall correctly bai shao doesn't taste good... bleagh! More ginger and licorice for me today

Henry

* all organs mentioned here are Chinese medicine organ systems, which are not closely related to the organs in modern anatomical science.

Henry -

The problem you're experiencing is termed "Caravelitis" It usually only afflicts people who old Italian espresso makers that are so beautiful that they beckon one to imbibe in rather more of the "black medicine" (a term coined by the Oglala Sioux sometime around 1870) than befits a holy man.

Seriously, I hope you find a good solution to the problem.

PC

peacecup wrote:The problem you're experiencing is termed "Caravelitis"

Heh heh Well, it is better then the dreaded "Upgraditus," right?

Henry

hbuchtel wrote:Hi Jon, it's nice to meet some other CM folks! Funny to do so on an espresso site

Hi!
I'm on CM... curing my asthma and allergy away with some herbs and espresso
if you're in a cold environment coffee will bring the coldness inside, unless you add/eat some warm metal