I can clearly remember my first office job. I was a fresh-faced intern, eager and ready to learn in an office full of people who had a few more years of experience under their belts. It wasn’t long before the 9-5 grind and commuting into London every day started to take its toll. I was a caffeine virgin at the time, so one of my colleagues (who ironically seemed to not have any energy at all) suggested I try taking a caffeine hit. So we gathered around the coffee station, ready for my initiation. As the brown elixir poured into my bloodstream, I felt the desired effect: as my energy levels started to rise, I began my downward spiral.
Before I knew it, I had become that person. The one that couldn’t speak to anyone before their morning coffee, and it wasn’t long before I was relying on the Nespresso machine to get through the day. My career developed, and so did my relationship with coffee. I became a more sophisticated drinker - only drinking black coffee and going a bit further to find an 'independent' coffee shop with a better bean blend. I know, I disapprove of myself too. I used my coffee snobbery to justify the three cups a day when, in reality, it was a matter of survival.
As I got older, I started to have some health battles. I couldn’t remember the last time I had a good night's sleep, and I seemed to always be running on a baseline level of stress.
“I wish I was a heavy sleeper, I’m just not someone that sleeps well,” I used to say with a slight twitch behind my eye.
I started focusing on my health, eating clean, exercising every day, and although I was in the best shape of my life, I was arguably more tired than ever before. I was working faster, not smarter because I just couldn’t stay focused; my brain was foggy, and although I was completely exhausted, I couldn't fall asleep.
Have you tried giving up coffee? Someone said to me.
It sounds ridiculous, but coffee had become such an intrinsic part of my everyday routine that it hadn’t even crossed my mind that it could be the cause of my underlying anxiety. I started doing some research into caffeine and how it affects your brain; unfortunately, a lot of what I found did not support my favorite brown drink.
It turns out caffeine only appears to give us energy. Caffeine works by blocking the action of adenosine, a molecule that gradually accumulates in the brain over the course of the day, preparing the body to rest. Caffeine interferes with this process, stopping adenosine from doing its job - and so keeps us feeling alert. But all good things must come to an end, and behind the scenes, your adenosine levels continue to rise, so when the caffeine is metabolized, the tiredness returns. No wonder I was feeling so terrible; all this time I had been borrowing energy from caffeine, and now I was paying back my debt, with interest.
I had entered into a co-dependent relationship with coffee, and it was time for us to part ways. I wasn't prepared to go cold turkey, so I started looking into the alternative that is sweeping the world by storm. Mushrooms. Mushroom powder is known as a healthy alternative to regular coffee, boasting medicinal mushroom extracts and added health benefits. Like clockwork, as soon as I started thinking about it, the social media algorithms did its thing, and I came across Space Goods.
Space Goods is a UK-based brand that is helping people to unlock their potential, restore their energy, and generally live a healthier lifestyle through their 'rainbow dust' product. The cynic in me felt skeptical about a product with the name 'rainbow dust,' but the more I started looking into it, the more convinced I became about this mystery powder.
If you think I was about to replace my coffee with a cup of blended-up mushrooms, then have no fear. Rainbow dust is an adaptogenic powder that includes mushrooms but is also made up of a menu of active and natural ingredients that are blended together to create an all-in-one formula designed to give you sharper focus, sustained energy, and a zen-like calm throughout the day without the caffeine crash at the end. It's packed with amazing ingredients, but there were two that I was particularly interested in: Lion’s mane mushroom and Ashwagandha, both had been recommended to me by my doctor.
Lion’s mane, also known as ‘the brain mushroom,’ has been traditionally used in Far East Asia as a medicinal tonic for the brain to improve memory and concentration. It has been shown to stimulate the production of the Nerve Growth Factor (NGF) in the brain and helps to repair and grow the nerve cells in a part of the brain associated with thinking, learning, and emotions. The second ingredient is Ashwagandha, famously known to combat stress and anxiety. As someone who is terrible at remembering to take their supplements, I was very excited to have all of them in one easy-to-use powder. You can find out more about the ingredients here.
The impressive list of ingredients and fun, brightly colored packaging had caught my attention - but would it actually work? It's hard to ignore the hundreds of success stories on their website, and after reading through them all, I was ready to join the converted.
“Absolutely love Space Goods. It just completely replaced my morning coffee after I found out caffeine was terrible for my anxiety. This gives me sustained energy and focus.” says Fernanda F (Space Goods customer).
The magical pink and purple sachet arrived in the post, and the next morning, instead of making my usual black Americano, I mixed 1 tablespoon of the powder in a cup of hot water. I will say, the drink has a very different taste to coffee and is closer to a hot chocolate, which I quite liked. The first day without coffee, I did experience some of the predictable symptoms: a slight headache, irritability, and a dull feeling of tiredness. After just 3 days of taking rainbow dust, those symptoms had vanished. The biggest thing I started to notice was my mind slowing down, which might sound like a negative, but actually, it helped me to stay focused and work SMARTER, not faster. I no longer had a million things coming into my brain at once, and in turn, my productivity increased dramatically. My afternoon coffee mug was left lonely and neglected when 2 pm came around, and I wasn’t reaching for a caffeine hit to see me through the day. After years of identifying myself as a light sleeper, I was suddenly slumbering straight through the night, waking up feeling refreshed and calm.
Four weeks into using the powder, and I felt like a new woman, but I did start to miss the taste of coffee. So now, I start my morning with Space Goods and follow it up with a mid-morning decaf. There are so many benefits to this magical powder, not to mention the amount of money I saved on buying a coffee every day. You can buy a one-time purchase that is roughly 30 servings or you can sign up for their subscription service where you save 20% and it conveniently gets delivered straight to your door. So if you are like me and looking to put a pause on your relationship with caffeine or simply want to level up your focus, then you have got to try Space Goods; the results are out of this world.
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