Many of us know that peppermint is good for a stomach upset and even freshens the breath — for a while, anyway.

Now scientists in the U.S. are claiming that it also increases alertness by as much as one-third.

More, it reduces tiredness by 15pc, they say.

Peppermint is obviously a herb you should have on your shelf, not to mention a box of mint teabags.

For most people coffee is an innocuous beverage associated with hanging out among friends in Starbucks or more gentile tearooms.

For others — let’s call them power users — it’s a nasty addiction that causes heart palpitations, panic attacks and other alarming side effects. The main culprit, of course, is caffeine.

We should be aware that caffeine is present in quantity in chocolate and many soft drinks, like Coca Cola, and less so in various teas. It’s hard to escape.

So how can you give it up? Here’s a simple Sideways method that will cause you little pain and avoids the withdrawal symptoms often referred to as “cold turkey”. It involves an eight-day tapering down period which gently eases you off what has now become a poison to you.

Don’t give up coffee overnight. That just condemns you to four or five days of headaches and nausea. Try switching to tea instead. This means the English variety of black tea. Black tea has some caffeine but less than coffee, so the jump is not a quantum leap.

After four days of that, switch to green tea, which has very little caffeine, but huge health benefits from the high levels of antioxidants.

You can actually stick with green tea after the four days, if you like the taste — many don’t — but this is the point at which you can say goodbye to caffeine completely.

It’s up to you.