Plastic in Your Coffee: What I Missed the First Time

I drink four cups of coffee every morning, rain or shine. Each cup carries a different supplement — the coffee is the delivery system for a good part of my stack.

Four cups works for me. It might not work for you. Different bodies, different tolerances, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

But this is not really a post about coffee. It is a post about being wrong for six months and not knowing it.

Round One: Getting Rid of the Pods

I used to run single-serve plastic pods. You are forcing near-boiling water through a small plastic cup and drinking whatever comes out the other side.

So about seven months ago I switched to a drip machine and ground beans. Big improvement, and I felt good about it. I thought that job was finished.

Round Two: What I Had Missed

Then I actually looked at the machine.

The water still traveled through plastic tubing on its way to the coffee. The basket holding the grounds was plastic too. I had removed the obvious plastic and left the rest of it in place, and I had been congratulating myself the whole time.

That is the part worth passing on. The first fix felt like the whole fix. It was about half of one.

What I Use Now

A month ago I moved to a glass pour-over setup. Glass cone, glass carafe, paper filter, no plastic anywhere in the path the water takes.

It takes longer. It costs a bit more up front, though not much. Both of those are real and I am not going to talk you out of them.

It is still worth it to me. At over 70 I do not need any more plastic going into my brain, and I suspect I collected plenty already from years of drinking out of plastic bottles.

The exact setup I bought is written up here: the plastic-free coffee setup.

Why I Care About This at All

I want to be careful here, because this is a place where it is easy to oversell.

Microplastics have been found in human tissue, including brain tissue, and exposure from food and drink is real and measurable. What has not been established is how much harm a given level of exposure does to a given person. Anyone telling you otherwise is ahead of the evidence.

So my reasoning is simple rather than scientific. This is an exposure I can reduce almost completely, for about the cost of a decent dinner, with no downside except a slower brew. That is a good trade even if the harm turns out to be smaller than feared.

I have written more about what is in the cup in my four-cup coffee protocol, and about the research on coffee itself in the coffee and dementia study.

One More Thing: The Caffeine Window

I do not drink coffee past one in the afternoon.

That is not willpower, it is data. My ring tracks what caffeine does to my sleep, and anything past that hour costs me. Everyone's window is different. Finding yours is free and it may be the most useful thing in this post.

Come Walk With Me

I post every day about longevity and health in my Facebook group — a health tip, an anti-aging tip, a supplement tip. Come join us at garyleland.com/facebook.

And tell me in the comments what you brew in. I am always open to a better setup.

Keep Going

Everything I take is listed with its dose on my supplement stack and on my protocols page. What I do to stay strong is on my fitness page, and every blood number I publish is on my test and stats page.

Stay sovereign, stay healthy,
Gary

A note from Gary: I am not a doctor, and I am definitely not your doctor. I am a 71-year-old man running a 129-year experiment on himself in public. Talk to your physician before changing anything you take.

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