To be totally honest, I’ve historically had a pretty unfair relationship with coffee. I adore the taste and the ritual, but I’ve never needed it. I usually sip my first cup around 11-ish, skip it a few days a week without issue, and have somehow avoided the spike-and-crash cycle people love to complain about. Then I turned 30.

While none of those classic coffee problems showed up, my stomach seemingly began rejecting coffee overnight. Something switched, and suddenly a simple cup no longer sat right with me (bloating, cramps, things that don’t need to be explicitly shared…). Not ready to give up my ritual, I did what any reasonable person would do: I asked the barista at my co-working space what was going on. Here’s what he explained, plus the solution I landed on in Everyday Dose.