So after you wake up in the morning, pull yourself out of bed and rub your eyes, what’s the next thing you go to grab? Coffee! Coffee along with all the other caffeinated drinks like soda or tea, are America’s lifeline. According to an article written by Candy Sagon published on aarp.org in 2013, America drinks 624 million cups of coffee a day! That’s three cups of coffee per coffee drinker every time the sun rises! This probably doesn’t surprise you, but 90% of people consume some type of caffeine everyday. But what makes this drink so appealing? Is it the taste? The energy you get? The health effects? Everybody has their own reason for why they drink this blessing in a cup. In this post i am going to be talking about 3 things, the positives of caffeine, the negatives of caffeine, and the benefits of caffeine.
To start off, lets talk about the positives of consuming caffeine. According to NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the consumption of major amounts of coffee can decrease your risk of getting parkinson’s disease by 4-8% (mostly due to the caffeine aspect). According to the AARG article listed previously, the consumption of caffeine can also decrease the risk of Alzheimer’s and Dementia, suicide, oral cancer, and stroke. There could be many reasons as to why coffee/caffeine decreases all these diseases. It could be that the consumption of caffeine can make you more active and social, or it could be that coffee beans are nutrient packed with more then 1,000 health enriching compounds. The world may never know why caffeine or coffee provides the health effects that it does, but I don’t know anyone who’s complaining about it.
Now to the downside of caffeine. According to Steven Meredith, a researcher in behavioral pharmacology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, caffeine is a drug and can send your body into withdrawal without the supply of it. Withdrawal symptoms can range from headaches to fatigue, usually going away within a couple days as your body adjusts. More negative effects of large caffeine consumption are increased anxiety levels, blood sugar levels, and can cause upset stomachs.
There are also many benefits to caffeine consumption. According to the NIH’s National Cancer Institute, coffee drinkers had a lower risk of mortality then did non-coffee drinkers. Coffee drinkers were also less likely to die from heart and respiratory disease, stroke, diabetes and infections. In a peer reviewed article entitled “Caffeine intake is related to successful weight loss maintenance” published on PubMed.gov, it was found that a population that maintained a weight loss consumed far more caffeine and coffee then the normal population. It was stated that caffeine consumption might be a player when it comes to weightless and BMI.
Overall, caffeine has been proven to have both negative and positive effects, and also benefits to the human body. It is a personal decision when it comes to weighing out the options. As a college student my life is filled with caffeine, whether it’s to wake me up in the morning or keep me awake at night; I couldn’t imagine a day without it. In a quote made by Cassandra Clare in the City of Ashes “As long as there was coffee in the world, how bad could things be?”
Resources:
Candy Sagon. Caffeine for Your Health — Too Good to Be True?. http://www.aarp.org/health/healthy-living/info-10-2013/coffee-for-health.html. Accessed Nov 12, 2015.
Cassandra Clare. “As long as there was coffee in the world, how bad could things be?”. http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/coffee. Accessed Nov 12, 2015.
Icken D. Caffeine intake is related to successful weight loss maintenance. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2015.