Coffee – the universal drink. Whether you're a devout drinker or prefer to steer clear, chances are you know someone with a coffee ritual. With the Starbucks era in full swing, the burning question is whether our beloved brew is a healthy, or if it's actually bad for our health. I, for one, grew up under the impression that coffee was a one-way ticket to the health danger zone. Whether it was a modest cup or a full-blown ten-cup extravaganza, I viewed it as almost on par with smoking. But here's the real question – is coffee the villain it's made out to be, or is that just a tall tale?
1. Why does it give you energy?
We all know caffeine gives you energy. It boosts your stamina and gives you mental focus. A lot of athletes use caffeine for that exact reason -- it's said to improve their overall performance. Furthermore, caffeine is an adanosine antagonist (it blocks adenosine).
"Adenosine has a multiplicity of effects on mammalian tissue acting as a homeostatic mediator to restore normal tissue function following stress and trauma. It also appears to be the key mediator of sleep, explaining why caffeine, an adenosine receptor antagonist, is the most widely used stimulant."
What this is saying is that by blocking adenosine with caffeine, you will feel more awake and energised. Adenosine's main function is to dampen down brain activity. So, by blocking this function, there's an increased level of brain activity. Increased brain activity produces adrenaline, giving you that feeling of alertness and almost a pump, like you've worked out.
2. Coffee in sport
Positives
As said before, coffee (or rather caffeine) has a positive effect on athletes, improving their overall performance.
There was a study in 1978 where 9 competitive cyclists were asked to cycle until they were physically exhausted and could no longer cycle, to measure the effects of caffeine on stamina with prolonged exercise. They split the group into two, with one group drinking de-caffeinated coffee and the other drinking coffee with caffeine.
One trial was performed an hour after ingesting decaffeinated coffee (Trial D), while a second trial (C) required that each subject consume coffee containing 330 mg of caffeine 60 min before the exercise. Following the ingestion of caffeine (Trial C), the subjects were able to perform an average of 90.2 (SE +/- 7.2) min of cycling as compared to an average of 75.5 (SE +/- 5.1) min in the D Trial.
What this shows is that the caffeinated group cycled for about 90.2 minutes, while the non-caffeinated group cycled for 75.5. That is an increase of about twenty percent. That's an incredible amount.
Negatives
There are, however, downsides with drinking coffee in sports. Even though caffeine is mostly good, drinking coffee alongside using caffeine with workouts may desensitise you from the effects of the caffeine. In short, this means it won't have a lot, if at all, of effect on your workout or training, basically making your caffeine intake useless.
With this in mind, they recommend that athletes who drink coffee regularly should cut down in the lead-up to a sports performance. If not, they may be unlikely to reap the rewards of a caffeine supplement.
3. Coffee in mental health
Positives
Studies have shown that coffee may improve your mood and lessen the chance for depression -- however, this only accounts for people who have not had a history with depression and only drink moderate amounts of coffee.
It helps you gain focus and mental clarity, it can seriously help your productivity.
Negatives
While coffee may lessen the risk for depression short term, long term it may actually help depression start to form.
As far as depression is concerned, coffee is a powerful diuretic which stimulates the body to get rid of excess water. The trouble is that dietary minerals such as magnesium are also eliminated in urine, and often in great amounts. Moreover, regular, that is, daily consumption of coffee and especially higher than recommended intakes can impair nutrient absorption at intestinal level. And the result of a prolonged magnesium deficiency is depression.
Furthermore, it's not recommended for people with anxiety to drink coffee. Because it's as highly brain stimulating as it is, it will only magnify the existing anxiety symptoms.
4. How is our Physical Health affected?
Positives
Coffee is an excellent source of antioxidants, which may help protect cells from damage.
Higher consumption of coffee – caffeinated and decaf alike – was associated with a lower risk of total mortality, including deaths attributed to heart disease, nervous system diseases and suicide.
Negatives
While it has been shown that the antioxidants in coffee beans and coffee may protect against several aggressive forms of cancer, emerging research has found that coffee also contains acrylamide, a known and probable carcinogen. Acrylamide can be produced when vegetables that contain the amino acid asparagine, such as potatoes, are heated to high temperatures in the presence of certain sugars. Coffee is one of those vegetables that produces acrylamide while being roasted.
Another point is mineral depletion in the body.
There is also the issue of mineral depletion as a result of coffee consumption. Drinking coffee every day and especially in large amounts (basically anything over one cup of coffee a day) can result in depletion of mineral reserves in the body and reduction of mineral absorption (like magnesium).
5. Coffee and sleep
We've gone over the brain-stimulating properties of coffee, how it increases brain activity after drinking only a little bit of it. For sleep, this isn't ideal. Coffee increases insomnia, making it hard or nearly impossible to sleep.
"Caffeine typically prolonged sleep latency, reduced total sleep time and sleep efficiency, and worsened perceived sleep quality. Slow-wave sleep and electroencephalographic (EEG) slow-wave activity were typically reduced, whereas stage-1, wakefulness, and arousals were increased."
There really aren't any positive sides when it comes to sleep in relation to coffee, so calm down on the espresso's before bed.
6. How to take coffee
In this post, the coffee we were talking about was black coffee. Black coffee can be part of a healthy diet, but anything you add to that black coffee -- like cream, sugar or syrup -- is unlikely to fit into that healthy diet. It can even reverse the positive effects of coffee, making it mostly negative ones.
“We know that sugar has adverse effects,” said Penny Kris-Etherton, a nutrition professor at Penn State University. “Even if you add sugar and don’t exceed your calorie needs, you’re still negating some of the benefits because sugar is a negative food ingredient."
(With coffee being healthy) "They’re not talking about these large Frappuccinos that have at least 800 calories a beverage,” Kris-Etherton said. “Very quickly, calories can add up, and weight gain will create negative effects on cardiac risk.”
So, the baseline is to drink your coffee black. Sure, you can have your pumpkin-spice-everything-nice coffee from Starbucks every once in a while. Is it healthy? Absolutely not. Does it taste great? Not sure, I haven't tasted it, but I bet it does.
Conclusion
All in all there are multiple positive sides along with negative ones. It's up to you to decide whether or not you want to continue (or start) drinking coffee. Maybe you can regulate or lessen your intake with things like sport if you use caffeine supplements, maybe you will stop drinking coffee before bed. As with all things, moderation is still the most important thing.
Additional information
The following sources are the ones used in this post, be sure to check them out for additional information on the subject. Some of the experiments or tests are very informative, we highly recommended giving them a quick look.
Sources:
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