Pros and Cons of Coffee Drinking
I’ve been drinking coffee for about 3 years now. In high school, I would only have about 1 cup just to wake me up enough for my 8am class. But one cup was enough for the day. In college, however, I find myself drinking 2 or 3 cups and all throughout the day. I’ll have the typical cup in the morning so I can actually function, then a mid day cup to help me stay awake enough to do homework, and then sometimes an afternoon cup when I couldn’t take a nap that day. As I am drinking more coffee, I started to wonder what it is actually doing to my body, and if it there are any long-term effects to drinking more coffee than usual. I’ve heard that coffee and caffeine are drugs, and I didn’t think this was true until I realized I needed it to get through the day. Here you can see the amount of people this directly relates because of how many people drink coffee in the United States. Gonzalez researched the pros and cons of drinking coffee on a daily basis.
The Pros of Coffee Drinking:
- Drinking coffee can reduce headaches. In addition, mixing coffee and painkillers, according to WebMD, excellerates the painkiller by almost 40% which will help reduce pain even faster (Gonzalez).
- According to The British Coffee Association, coffee drinkers have a 40% less chance of fatal liver diseases. This was seen most significant in drinkers who already had problems with their liver (LifeHack).
- The chances of developing Type II Diabetes is greatly dropped in people who drink coffee daily (LifeHack).
- Regular coffee drinkers have a less than 60% chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease in later life when compared to non-coffee drinkers (LifeHack).
The Cons of Coffee Drinking:
- Coffee is also linked to headaches. While drinking coffee can reduce the amount of headaches a person has, the lack of drinking coffee can create more frequent, and more painful headaches. On average, if a daily coffee drinker forgets or skips a cup of coffee one day, they will be irritable and potentially have painful headaches from the lack of coffee in their system(Gonzalez).
- Too much coffee is bad for you. Just like everything else, coffee is better is moderation. Over drinkers, aka people who drink 5 or more cups of coffee, have a better chance of bone marrow thinning. This impacts the strengths of a person’s bones, so this is specifically harmful for older individuals who choose to drink 5 or more cups of coffee a day (LifeHack).
- Lastly, depending on the time of day you drink coffee, there is a chance of an inability to fall asleep. This is obvious because of the amount of caffeine in coffee, however, to avoid this, researchers suggest not drinking any coffee after 2pm so a majority of the caffeine is able to leave your system (LifeHack).
Overall, it is easy to see the correlation and causation between both the positive and negative effects coffee has on people. Depending on the amount that a person drinks, these effects can be more prevalent than those who don’t drink coffee or drink less than regular.
“What Drinking Coffee Does to You.” Lifehack RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Sept. 2016.
Robert T. Gonzalez / I09. “10 Things Coffee Does to Your Body.” Alternet. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Sept. 2016.
I am a coffee drinker. Did you find any research on tea? Is tea better for you than coffee? I hear that tea can damage kidneys while coffee can upset stomachs. While these are just anecdotes, I wonder if one is better than the other.
I found this article very interesting because i can relate to some of the cons in the article. I had this friend in high school who used to drink multiple cups of coffee everyday. She used to tell me that if she didn’t have her coffee she would often experience bad headaches and sometimes even had to go home. I have never been a big coffee drinker because of the myth that it stunt your growth and i’m trying to get ever inch i can get. I did some research and found that coffee doesn’t actually stunt that can be seen here. I may now have to start drinking coffee for the health just not too many cups a day
I love coffee. It is priority number one for me every morning. I completely relate to caffeine headaches and being irritable on those days when coffee escapes me. I liked how you acknowledged that the pros and cons were correlated and caused by coffee, but I think it would have been interesting for you to point out one or two that was caused and one or two that was correlated.
I am also a coffee addict so I relate to this post. On an average day I usually drink about 3 cups of coffee as, but during finals week you can find me in the library drinking about 5. I have tried to give up coffee, because I know too much is never good, but when I don’t drink coffee it leaves me with a lot of bad symptoms. Two of these symptoms are being a lot more tired and really bad headaches. Whenever I feel a caffeine headache coming on, I immediately have to run to the nearest Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts and fuel up. Another down side is that unfortunately its drains my bank account like no other!