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Coffee 101

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009    Subscribe To Our Feed

People have been drinking coffee in one form or another for hundreds of years. During those hundreds of years there has been debate after debate about whether or not it causes health problems. The simple truth is that there is no simple answer to the question.

Coffee has both pros and cons and these should be taken into consideration. For many people starting the day off without a cup of coffee would not even be an option. Many of these same people will drink multiple cups of coffee throughout the morning and some will continue throughout the day. These are the people who should look at both sides of the coin and then decide how much coffee they should or should not drink.

Good Coffee

As any morning coffee drinker will attest, coffee is an excellent pick-me-up. Practically everyone knows that is true. However, what many people don’t realize is that coffee does have other good qualities.  Some of those good qualities are actually health boosters, such as:

Research has shown that coffee may help reduce the risk of diabetes, particularly early stage diabetes. Coffee has been shown to improve the body’s sensitivity to insulin and reduce blood sugar levels. Some researchers say that 6 cups per day can reduce the risk of diabetes by fifty percent.

Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease both have been shown to be effected by coffee. People who drink coffee on a regular basis have an eighty percent less chance of having these diseases affect their body than non-coffee drinkers.

The risk of colon cancer is reduced by 25 percent by drinking just two cups of coffee per day. This may be due in part to coffee aiding in bowel functions.
 
Other health concerns that have been shown to be positively affected by coffee include: cirrhosis of the liver risk decreases by 80% and the chance of having gallstones is decreased as well.

Coffee contains many chemicals that are antibacterial and also contains more antioxidants than a cup of grape juice. The antioxidants help to fight infection and the chemicals found in coffee have antibacterial effects.

In addition, coffee has been shown to help prevent dental cavities and to be helpful to asthma patients. The latter is possibly due to the hot beverage opening up the passageways for breathing.

Bad Coffee

All of the good side effects do not mean that there are not some bad side effects. Coffee is addictive. People who drink coffee daily become addicted to the caffeine. The body becomes accustomed to having caffeine and when it does not it reacts in the form of headaches, depression-like moods, and imbalanced blood sugars.

Coffee can also slow the metabolic system down which makes it harder to maintain weight. There are some people who argue that coffee keeps them from eating, while this may be true, it is also true that metabolism slows down which stops weight loss.
 
Bottom of the Cup

The bottom of the cup, so to speak, is that just like anything else, coffee consumption should be in moderation. Coffee doesn’t have to be banned but it should be monitored and not over–indulged in.

-Katya Coen

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