After a long night with limited sleep, the only thing that gets me up and off to class in the morning is the thought of buying a nice warm cup of coffee. Buying and drinking coffee has recently become a part of my daily routine. Whether it’s one or two cups in the morning or a few more to get me through classes, it’s becoming necessary. But, what effects does all this coffee drinking have on my body?

When I think of the negative consequences of drinking coffee, the first thing that comes to mind is the myth that it stunts your growth. We know that this is myth because with all the scientific research that has been done, none fully proved that caffeine has any effect on growth or height. The only scientific evidence having to do with height was a study done by Dr. Robert P. Heaney. He linked reduced bone morrow in women with caffeine consumption. He studied women between the ages of 65 and 77 over a three-year period to see how their coffee consumption affected their bones. Each woman drank about 18 ounces of coffee daily and showed a greater amount of bone morrow loss than women who drank no coffee or less. But, with this said, Heaney noticed that there could be a third confounding variable involved in this. He realized with an increase in coffee drinking, the women were drinking less of other drinks, including some with necessary vitamins. The third variable in this case could be calcium deficiency. Also, with the nonrandomized and limited control group, I believe that this study cannot be enough to show a relationship between height and caffeine consumption, adding to the stunting of growth being a myth.

According to the FDA, the only known effects that caffeine has on your body includes; making you jittery and shaky, making it hard to fall and stay asleep, making your heart beat faster with an uneven heart rhythm raising your blood pressure, causing headaches, nervousness, and dizziness, making you dehydrated, and making you dependent on the drug. I decided to look into some of these effects and how science has proven it.

One thing I looked into was the effect that caffeine and coffee drinking has on cardiovascular health. Since caffeine is a stimulant, you would expect that it has some type of effect on heart rate and blood pressure, but some scientists disagree. Roberto Corti, MD, studied 15 habitual and non habitual coffee drinkers and their arterial blood pressure (BP), heart rate, and muscle sympathetic nervous activity (MSA), before and after drinking coffee. After the study was done numerous times to prove reliability, he concluded that coffee and caffeine induces acute (or short term) increases in MSA and BP for non habitual, but not habitual coffee drinkers. But, after doing the test again wit decaffeinated coffee, he noticed the same effects. Because of this, we can conclude that there must be a third confounding variable in coffee, other than caffeine, that may cause the effect in cardiovascular health.

Clearly, scientists are still producing studies that add onto what is already known. In the case of caffeine, science is still trying to prove or disprove studies relating to cardiovascular heath and growth. By doing more studies, we are adding to the preexisting knowledge of caffeine. Maybe one day someone’s data will prove the myths of coffee wrong and all the physical effects accurate.