A couple of weeks ago, I was having trouble sleeping. I have never had any sleeping disorders to speak of, so I thought that maybe switching to decaffeinated coffee would help me get back to sleeping the way I normally do, like a log.

Like many things in my life, I was wrong. The difference between regular coffee and decaffeinated coffee has had absolutely no effect on my sleep pattern.

Caffeine Fears

As I've previously mentioned, the caffeine in coffee has never had an effect on me. Drinking decaffeinated coffee for the past couple of weeks has proven it to me. I'm still having trouble sleeping, but I think it has a lot more to do with the fact that I have the head cold from hell, picked up from one of my nieces who picked it up at school. Unfortunately, the only way to avoid something like that is to become a hermit (not a bad idea).

You might think the real reason for my switch would be to avoid the caffeine curve. Sorry, but I don't believe that crap for a moment. The real reason is exactly as I stated. I needed to prove to myself that caffeine really doesn't have any effect on me and I did.

The only fear I had when I switched is that I would have caffeine withdrawals (headaches or freaking out) like the coffee withdrawals I had when I was forced to stop drinking coffee (I was deployed and we just didn't have any. I freaked out.). Anyway, I didn't have any withdrawals at all.

Discriminating Taste

Although I don't own a coffee maker, I drink a lot of coffee. It's all instant coffee. Even though both the regular and decaffeinated coffees I've been drinking are both instant, they are of the same brand. I can tell the difference in the taste. The decaffeinated version doesn't taste as good as the regular. With me and coffee, it's all about the taste, not the caffeine.

I like brewed coffee so much more than instant and I plan to buy a coffee maker of some kind in the near future. I have no idea what kind I'll be able to find here in the Philippines, so I may have to get one shipped in. In the meantime, and when I go grocery shopping again, I'll be buying regular instant coffee.

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I think I drink way too much coffee during any given day. Although it's not keeping me up at night, it can't be good for me. I think if and when I switch to decaffeinated coffee, I'll suffer from some severe caffeine withdrawal headaches for a couple of days.

The Problems with Decaffeinated Coffee

The biggest problem I have with decaffeinated coffee is the taste. I don't know about anyone else, but I can taste the difference between regular coffee and decaffeinated coffee. This is especially true if it's the same brand. I really don't want to sacrifice the flavor of regular coffee when switching.

I'm concerned about whether decaffeinated coffee is as healthy as regular coffee. There are at least six different methods used to turn regular coffee into decaffeinated coffee. I worry that any one of the processes could do more damage than good and I'm not just talking about the coffee. What we consume affects us and I'm more worried about the effect it would have on me than the effect on the coffee itself.

Naturally Decaffeinated Coffee

This is a misnomer because there isn't any such thing. It's just what scientists have labeled it as. The proper term would either be "low-caffeine coffee" or "caffeine-free coffee". Actually, anything that would indicate that caffeine didn't have to be removed would be okay.

Caffeine-free natural coffees were found among wild Madagascan species, but are not sold on the world market. They produce inferior coffee and are difficult to breed from.

In 2004, researchers in Brazil completed a study of around 3,000 coffee plants from Ethiopia and found three that had almost no caffeine. The plants appear to lack an enzyme needed to produce caffeine. Scientists hoped that by crossing the caffeine-free variety with commercial crops they could make natural brands that could be available in five years. This is 2009 and that five-year mark is rapidly approaching. I haven't seen any yet.

Health Concerns about Caffeine

Coffee has been linked to risk factors for heart disease, stillbirths, osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, and insomnia. I don't know who did the linking and whether it's coffee in general they're talking about or caffeine itself.

Researchers claim that drinking coffee can lower the risk of Parkinson's disease and help protect against bladder cancer. Again, I don't know if they're talking about coffee or caffeine.

I'm 48-years old and I have yet to suffer any ill effects from drinking regular coffee. I drink several cups a day and have been doing so for at least 20 years. What I'm afraid of is the possibility that it may affect me as I head past middle-age.

When I sleep, I sleep like a rock (or like a log, depending on what colloquialism you prefer). My sleep cycle is odd enough as it is because of all the online projects I continuously work on (and dealing with a global audience), so I can't say whether caffeine affects my sleep or not.

I think I'm going to try to hold out for the natural caffeine-free coffee to hit the market. If so, my worries will be over.

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