Coffee is pretty much the most beloved drink in the world. For many, it’s a daily morning ritual and its caffeine provides that amazing energy boost and mental pick-me-up. Coffee has a huge consumption rate among many different cultures. Both for social, routine and stimulatory reasons. The thought of starting your day without a steamy brew might make your knees quiver. At least this is mostly a good vice, unlike say your two-hour-a-day Insta habit.
We now have plenty of evidence that coffee is good for us, within reason. Drinking one to three cups of black caffeinated coffee a day may reduce the risk of heart failure by 5 to 12% per cup, according to an analysis of three studies by the American Heart Association, published in Circulation: Heart Failure. A report in the Journal of Nutrition found that espresso-loving Italians who consumed 3 to 4 cups of Italian-style coffee (read: not white chocolate mocha) had a lower risk for mortality than those who drink little or none.
Another study, published in Ageing Research Reviews, reveals that moderate coffee drinking (2-3 cups a day) could be a simple yet effective way to support healthy aging by adding an average of 1.8 years to a person’s healthy life expectancy. An investigation in Clinical Nutrition found individuals who consumed an extra cup of coffee per day had a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes, potentially by lowering insulin resistance.
Lastly, a study in the British Medical Journal found a link between coffee and a lower risk for some cancers, as well as for cardiovascular disease and death from any cause.
There are a few possible reasons why a bean juice habit could be good for our tickers and longevity. Brewed coffee contains a various bioactive compounds like chlorogenic acids that may have strong antioxidant, anti-inflammatory properties and help improve metabolic health. Since so many people drink coffee and don’t consume enough other antioxidant-rich foods like fruits and vegetables then it’s safe to assume coffee is a big contributor to the antioxidants Americans consume.
It may also boost your health indirectly by keeping your microbiome in good working order. A new study in Nature Microbiology has revealed that coffee consumption significantly influences the gut microbiome, promoting the growth of beneficial bacteria. Both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee enhanced gut health due to their polyphenol content.
Or it could come down to moderate coffee drinkers having an overall healthier lifestyle including more exercise and better eating. (It’s not possible from epidemiological nutrition research to prove that drinking coffee directly prevents heart attacks and other diseases. What we have is association not causation.)
There you have it: Coffee is generally a healthy beverage. Perhaps not good for you on the same scale as kale, but still noticeably beneficial. But if you are a coffee die-hard there are a few things you need to know to get the most out of your beloved brew.
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Coffee May Jazz Up Your Workouts
A lot of people will down an espresso before hitting the gym as a means to give them a little edge. Caffeine can indeed give your workouts a boost via a few different mechanisms including lessening the perception of effort and fatigue and increasing muscle strength and power. (It seems that caffeine can lend an assist to both endurance and strength workouts.) But there is a good chance you won’t get the optimal performance-boosting dose from coffee alone.
The recommended athletic protocol based on research, which most people fail to follow, is to take in three to six milligrams of caffeine per kilogram of body weight, which works out to 240mg to 490mg for a 180-pound guy. That amount of caffeine could require you guzzle back of jug of mud. Fingers crossed you don’t have an overactive bladder.
Brewed coffee typically ranges from 60mg to 180mg depending on what kind of beans you’re using, how they’re prepared, how big your cup is, and so on. (Ounce for ounce espresso is more concentrated in caffeine than regular coffee.) The caffeine in a Starbucks coffee can be quite different than the amount in a Dunkin’ Donuts brew, and also different than what you would make at home. So the issue here is that it can be tough to know how much caffeine you are getting from coffee and you might need to drink more than you think to reach the recommended dose for performance benefits. Downing 4 cups of coffee before hitting the squat rack might not be the best plan if you don’t want to be running to the urinal.
Yes, it’s feasible that lower levels of caffeine that you would get from drinking a cup of coffee will give you a boost but perhaps just not as much as what would occur with higher intakes. Another issue is that people frequently exposed to caffeine may need the higher end of this dosage range to experience a workout boost than those who aren’t exposed to the stimulant.
For this reason, some people will turn to supplements like pills, gums, and chews before an important workout for a more controlled dose and to be more confident that enough is being consumed. The key here is enough and not too much. A protocol for some is to combine brewed coffee and supplements to get up to the necessary caffeine level.
Don’t Go Overboard
When it comes to coffee it might be a case of diminishing returns. One study found that among more than 300,000 adults those who consumed six or more cups of coffee per day over the long term had a lipid profile including greater levels of Apo-B and LDL cholesterol associated with a higher risk of heart disease. An expansive report in the New England Journal of Medicine says having two to five cups of coffee each day is linked to reduced risk of some chronic diseases, but taking in caffeine beyond this point may bring with it some unwelcomed consequences such as anxiety, insomnia or psychomotor agitation.
Researchers found that heavy caffeine consumption (400mg or more a day) regularly, which can also come from other sources like energy drinks, may lead to elevated blood pressure and heart rates due to the impact on the autonomic nervous system– even in otherwise healthy people. It was recommended that most people limit caffeine intake to 400 milligrams daily, which is about double what the typical American guy consumes in a day.
Most people convert 70 to 80 percent of the caffeine they consume into the alkaloid compound paraxanthine with no apparent toxic effects at reasonable amounts which suggests that large amounts of caffeine need to be consumed before it can have serious toxicological effects including death. Still, if you are pounding back the stuff all morning long, it might be a good idea to consider that you might be surpassing the healthy dose. Overall, it’s recommended that most of us limit our caffeine intake to no more than 400mg a day, less if someone who is pregnant or perhaps for people with existing anxiety conditions, heart arrhythmias, high blood pressure, heart disease, or diabetes .
Filter Your Brew
While unfiltered coffee can be richer in flavor and texture, it might not be the healthiest way to get your caffeine buzz. Interestingly, research conducted by Norwegian scientists suggests drinking large amounts of unfiltered styles of coffee including French press and espresso might be more harmful than consuming filtered brew such as drip coffee through a paper filter.
Why? Filtered coffee uses paper filters that trap compounds called diterpenes (cafestol and kahweol), which can raise LDL cholesterol levels with high intakes. Indeed, it’s been demonstrated that those who partake in filtered coffee can have better cholesterol numbers than those gravitating toward unfiltered options like espresso. It’s also been shown that people who drink a few cups of filtered coffee daily have lower homocysteine levels, a compound linked to the early onset of heart disease, than those who enjoy similar amounts of unfiltered coffee. Some research suggests that people who drink filtered coffee have lower rates of artery disease and death compared to those who drink unfiltered coffee.
But how much unfiltered coffee you need to drink regularly for it to have a potentially detrimental effect on health is unknown. If you enjoy a mug or two of unfiltered brew on the daily because you prefer its bolder flavor it’s likely not to be particularly problematic and the benefits of drinking coffee at this level may outweigh any drawbacks.
Skip the Sweet Stuff
It’s a good idea to embrace the bitterness and break out of the habit of sweetening your brew. It should be no surprise that coffee has turned into another vehicle for added sugar in our diets. A latte from Starbucks can sucker punch you with 40 grams or more of extra sugar. All this additional sweet stuff can cancel out the health benefits we should expect from drinking black gold. This 2024 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition discovered that people who consumed unsweetened coffee, both regular and decaf, were less likely to pack on the pounds than those who drank their Joe doused in sugar. Interestingly, the weight gain impact was not witnessed for coffee consumed with cream or coffee whitener.
One study in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics discovered that drinking coffee…surprise, surprise… can be protective against developing hypertension, but this benefit does not occur for sweetened coffee. And this 2024 report in theAmerican Journal of Clinical Nutrition determined that coffee consumption can offer some protection against brain conditions like dementia yet this association is not true for sweetened coffee.
Some of the problems associated with sweetened coffee may stem from the added calories it provides as well as the impact it has on metabolic health when consumed regularly. People who drink black coffee get about 69 fewer calories on average every day than those who add sugar and/or dairy, according to an analysis from the University of Illinois. More than 60 percent of those calories come from sugar, with fat accounting for most of the rest of the extra calories consumed.
It’s also worth noting that there is some data to suggest that caffeine can impact our perception of sweetness and, in turn, make sugary drinks and foods taste less sweet to us which could, in theory, increase the consumption of them. So if you are struggling to scale back your sugar intake it might be a good idea not to consume caffeinated coffee with sweetened foods and drinks. I am thinking of you guys who roll out of bed and wash down sugary cereal with a cup of Joe.
It Might Not Be the Best Drink for Everyone
Big population-level studies have produced some conflicting results about whether drinking coffee, especially in higher amounts, is good or bad for you. This is because the effects may depend on how you metabolize its caffeine. Fast metabolizers, those with a genetic variant of the CYP1A2 enzyme that speeds up the breakdown of caffeine, appear to have a lower risk of heart disease if they drink one to three cups of coffee a day, perhaps thanks to all those antioxidants.
Fast caffeine metabolizers get the caffeine out of their system quickly, so the positive effects percolate through. Conversely, slow metabolizers, those with a genetic variant of the CYP1A2 enzyme that reduces its activity, may have a higher risk of heart problems if they drink two or more cups of coffee a day. Slow metabolizers have caffeine in their system for longer, so the negative effects may dominate.
Recognizing which group you belong to can help you adjust your caffeine intake to optimize your overall well-being. There is some genetic testing available if you search the dark web, but this is likely not something you are going to be able to get your doctor to sing off on.
Though self-perception is not perfect science, in general, if you find that you are more sensitive to its stimulating effects at lower intake amounts and some of the side-effects such as palpitations, anxiety, insomnia, and gastrointestinal issues persist for longer even at moderate intakes of coffee then it’s a tip-off that you might be a slow caffeine metabolizer and are best served not doing espresso shots. Slower caffeine metabolizers, however, may be able to reap many of the health benefits of coffee by drinking decaffeinated options.
Drink It Straight Up
For the biggest health benefit, it might be a good idea to skip the cream. Recent research in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition indicates that the addition to dairy can reduce the amount of polyphenols from coffee that the body can use. In other words, your creamer might hinder your body’s ability to absorb coffee’s heart-healthy antioxidants. The fat and protein makeup of milk might be the reason why it makes coffee’s antioxidants less available to use for health-boosting purposes. Plant-based milks and creamers might not have the same detrimental impact on the antioxidants in coffee.
Lighten Up
It turns out that the roasting of green coffee beans contributes to a big chunk of the antioxidant power of coffee. And lighter roasts exposed to less intense heat might harbor higher levels of antioxidants than darker roasts and also contain lesser amounts of acrylamide, a potentially carcinogenic compound created in some foods when they are heated to high temperatures. But whether these differences make much of a difference to human health is not well understood. It’s likely safe to say that there are more upsides to drinking any roast style of coffee than downsides, just that lighter roasts might have a slight advantage. It appears that the brewing temperature of the water does not have a significant impact on antioxidant content.
Coffee Won’t Leave You Parched
Pay no attention to the verbiage that coffee is dehydrating. Those effects are pretty mild. In fact, coffee is hydrating and not the opposite. Although caffeine can act as a mild diuretic, the vast majority of what you drink in coffee is water so there is a net hydration gain. But it’s a different story if you are getting your caffeine from water-free sources like pills and not taking in adequate amounts of water along with these. This may contribute to being dehydrated.
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Top 6 Coffees Products To Get You Going
These coffee products can take your brew to the next level.
This coffee is beefed up with medicinal mushrooms, collagen, and zen-inducing L-theanine. So like java on steroids. It’s smooth tasting with subtle notes of chocolate.
For those who want their coffee to hold nothing back. This dark roast coffee is earthy and smoky in a good way. Plus, it wins the prize for the most flamboyant packaging that you won’t be able to get enough of.
Coffee beans grown organically at a lofty altitude result in your morning brew having a rich flavor and a smooth finish. Buying whole beans and grinding them yourself can serve to preserve freshness and flavor.
Finding an instant coffee you want to drink is not easy. This one made with organic coffee beans from Mexico has a great taste and texture, we kid you not. And even comes with its own sugar- and dairy-free creamer. Also impressive is that 10% of all the brand’s profits are directed towards charity.
Coffee and muscle-making whey protein…brilliant. Think of this as a buzz-worthy protein powder, if you catch our drift. The mocha flavor is delicious and there are only 3 grams of added sugar which is heaps less than most coffee drinks out there. Serve it cold or blend with hot water for a frothy protein-packed brew.
When cold water is used to steep coffee grounds less acid is released, so it can be gentler on your digestive system if coffee typically bothers you. Also, the longer brewing time and higher grounds-to-water ratio can give the cool brew more of a caffeine jolt per ounce than a regular cup of Joe. Each can of this drink has 180mg of caffeine and none of the sugary deluge that befalls most cold brews.
