The Health Effects Of Coffee You Should Be Aware Of
If you don’t have time to scroll all the way through, read this: coffee is good for you in moderation, and drink filtered coffee to avoid higher intakes of triglycerides that may increase your LDL cholesterol amounts. SHEESH! That was a mouthful. Grab a mouthful of that delicious bean-juice and follow on. Want to know how coffee can affect depression? Read on.
In 2016, The World Health Organization removed coffee from its list of possible carcinogens (a carcinogen is a substance known to cause cancer). Robert M. Shmerling, Associate Medical Professor at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA, writes, “It’s unusual a food on the ‘cancer risk list’ comes off of it”. Meaning that, for the World Health Organization and The International Agency for Research on Cancer to reverse a decision of theirs made 25 years ago, they are not joking around. What changed their minds? Research.
Since The WHO’s (The World Health Organization) decision in 1991, over 1,000 more studies surfaced concerning the relationship between coffee and cancer. A group of 23 scientists at the IARC say “…there was inadequate evidence for the carcinogenicity of coffee drinking overall.” What types of cancer was coffee thought to cause? The World Health Organization originally reported that coffee was meant to cause female breast, uterine, bladder, pancreas, prostate, and liver cancer.
Since 2016, when The WHO reversed their decision, studies have surfaced that remark coffee may REDUCE chances of cancer and even death. Now that’s confusing. How could something 64% of Americans consumed in 2018 (according to the National Coffee Association) have once been on a list of things that could kill us? Are high nosed, non-coffee drinkers going to out-live us? What do I do with my Starbucks rewards points? I worked hard for those…
It looks like coffee drinkers need not worry. On top of there being more research conducted since the World Health Organization’s decision to remove coffee from its list of possible carcinogens, Donald Hensrud, M.D., doctor and online contributor to MayoClinic.com, offers us more insight. A large contributor to the reason The WHO reversed their decision was because they did not take into effect the commonalities heavy coffee drinkers share, which were lack of frequent physical activity and smoking.
After reading several publications on the health effects of coffee, I have compiled what I’ve learned from credible sources that I have also included at the bottom of this article. *What is crucial to understand is that there is not one decisive point of view that will offer the right answer for you.
Increase In Antioxidants
Free sample? It has powerful antioxidants!
I have no idea what antioxidants are, but I grabbed that free sample. According to MedicalOne.com, antioxidants are chemical compounds that destroy cell damaging particles that are called ‘free radicals’. Coffee beans contains thousands of antioxidants, and subsequently gain more once those beans are roasted. Drinking coffee introduces your body to antioxidants that inhibit inflammation, which is a primary cause to chronic diseases that include arthritis and atherosclerosis (the buildup of fat in your arteries).
Coffee And Depression
It is hotly contested that coffee reduces the effects of depression. Although The WHO removed coffee from its list of carcinogens, that does not settle the debate on coffee’s relationship with depression.
On the side that argues coffee exacerbates one’s depression, the reasoning is straightforward. For those that understand what it is like to either be sensitive to coffee in general or who have drank to much of it before, this is why. According to Medical News Today, the strength of coffee can cause headaches, insomnia, nausea, increased blood pressure, restlessness and much more. All of which propose distractions to our reality.
On the side arguing that coffee is a helpful part of one’s diet, information was provided by a March 2016 study in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry. I mentioned previously how coffee contains antioxidants, and these chemical compounds reduce inflammation. Researchers in this study hypothesized that depression may be an immune system reaction that causes inflammation in the brain. Thus, coffee intake could reduce that inflammation and either prevent or reduce the strength of one”s depression.
Reduced Risk Of Death
As silly as the heading sounds, the American Heart Association published a study in the journal Circulation in 2015, that found coffee in moderation (under 5 cups per day) could reduce the cause of death by the following diseases: cardiovascular disease, neurological illnesses, Type 2 Diabetes and suicides. However, the more you read the article, the more cautious the researchers are on how to exactly interpret their findings. What I concluded from this article is that a safe bet is to either stay under 5 cups of coffee per day.
Increase In LDL Cholesterol
Pharmacist Jennifer Moll, PharmD, is not the only medical professional to most recently concur with the several studies that have found unfiltered coffee contributes to elevations in LDL, or ‘bad’, cholesterol in your body. Click here and here for commentaries on how coffee filters catch triglycerides that, when ingested, add to your LDL cholesterol count. Unfiltered coffees include the following; espresso, Greek or Turkish style coffee, and French pressed coffee. There is a considerable amount of mutual adherence to this finding.
Room For Cream And Sugar?
It is important to remember that sugars and creams add fat and calories to your coffee. If your main motivation to drink coffee is to get you through the day, you may be willing to sacrifice taste for practicality. Healthy alternatives to sugar and cream is to add water to your coffee or choose non-dairy additives such as soy, oat or almond milk.
Helps You Poop!
Coffee is a diuretic. It helps your bowel movement and also loosens your stool.
Coffee Alternatives
- Water. Water is the fuel your brain, blood and organs use to function. Drink two to three glasses of water within your first hour of being awake. The results seem insignificant unless you actually try it. It may not replace coffee for you completely, but it could reduce your intake by 1 cup.
- Tea. Like coffee, tea has a varying amount of caffeine in all of its blends. However, green and black teas contain a chemical that coffee does not. L-theanine is a chemical found in green and black teas that is responsible for causing long term relaxation and alertness. Trying tea is worth a shot. I have and whatever L-theanine is, it actually works.
