Is Coffee Healthy ?
Coffee is known to be one of the world’s most popular drinks. Because of its high level of antioxidants and important nutrients, it seems to be quite healthy as well. Besides, even a few decades ago people used to think coffee is risky for our health. But now, the researchers say otherwise, as I mentioned above about coffee containing beneficial nutrients.
But all these things matter if we consume the right amount of coffee. That’s why in this article, you’ll get to know about the benefits of coffee and get the answer to a very important question, Is coffee healthy?
A Detailed Discussion on The Health Benefit of Coffee
Whether you love coffee or not, you can’t deny the advantages it offers. Let us have a look at some of the basic points of the usefulness of coffee.
1. Upgrades the Energy Level and Brain Function
Coffee is a huge source of caffeine which is a natural stimulant that keeps you awake and causes you to feel less tired, alerted, and focused. One cup of brewed coffee accommodates approximately 95mg of caffeine.
The caffeine enters into the bloodstream, after drinking coffee. Then the caffeine shifts to the brain. There it blocks the adenosine (the inhibitory neurotransmitter) which results in the release of other neurotransmitters like dopamine and norepinephrine in large amounts. As a result, various aspects of our brain like memory, energy level, mood, etc. upgrade.
2. Increases the Fat Burning and Boost Metabolism
Metabolism or metabolic rate is the process by which our body transforms what we eat and drink into energy. During this transformation, calories in food and beverages are merged with oxygen to let out the energy required by our body to function.
Caffeine may increase the metabolic rate of your body by 3-11%. It enhances the fat-burning process. That’s why most fat-burning supplements contain caffeine. However, for regular drinkers, this process may be less effective in the long term.
3. Enhances Physical Performance
Caffeine impacts the nervous system positively and causes the breakdown of body fat. As a result, free fatty acids are utilized as fuel. Besides, it also enhances the adrenaline levels in the blood. Adrenaline is responsible for preparing the body to cope up with serious physical activity.
With these contributions, averagely speaking, caffeine can increase body performance by 11-12 %. Now you understand why some people drink strong coffee about half an hour before heating the gym.
4. Contains Important Nutrients
Many essential nutrients are found in the coffee beans that also remain in the finished brewed coffee. For example, riboflavin, magnesium, manganese, pantothenic acid, potassium, niacin are all found in coffee.
Although a single cup contains a small percentage of these nutrients most the drinkers drink at least 2/3 cups every day which allows the small amounts of nutrients to add up rapidly.
5. Reduces the Risk of Type-2 Diabetes
Type-2 diabetes happens when our body is unable to create enough insulin or use the hormone successfully. That takes the blood glucose to a much higher and riskier extent. 6
But, did you know the fact? Some new researches say the morning coffee you drink could help to avert off type-2 diabetes and its not in the caffeine content. Researchers say that they found cafestol, which is a bioactive compound present in coffee. It is very useful because it increases insulin secretion, reduces fasting of glucose levels, and improves insulin sensitivity.
6. May Lowers the Risk of Alzheimer’s Disease & Dementia
Dr. Avishek Mohan from Old Dominion University in Norfolk led a new study that claims that coffee can alleviate the level of beta-amyloid by as much as 50%.
Now, what’s beta-amyloid? It’s a dangerous protein that is generally found in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease. The experiment though was done on mice but the result suggests that coffee might be able to rescue the human body from beta-amyloid.
7. May Reduces the Risk of Parkinson’s Disease
Many studies say that coffee can reduce the risk of neurodegenerative diseases including Parkinson’s disease, especially for men. Previous medical studies suggest that some of the coffee materials can restrain the construction of the toxic protein multitude related to Parkinson’s disease.
8. Can Safeguard the Liver
Most of us drink coffee every day to just freshen up ourselves in the morning or lift ourselves out of an afternoon slump. Talking about slump/depression! Yes, our next topic will be about that. Anyway, coffee is not only useful in these terms, many researchers have found that it might be helpful for us in many different ways. But most importantly, they say it can be useful for the Liver.
The researchers also claim that people who drink the right amount of coffee on a regular basis may have fewer chances of having liver cancer.
Another thing! Health experts also claim that coffee may help people who already have liver problems. Especially, having 1 or 3 cups of coffee a day might prevent or slow down these conditions :
- Fibrosis or Fibrotic Scarring
- Hepatitis B & C
- Non-alcoholic-related fatty liver disease (NAFLD)
- Hepatic Cirrhosis
By the way, coffee contains more than 1,000 chemicals and doctors are trying to ponder that what these chemicals do with our bodies. So, we might get to know some more benefits of coffee for the Liver or other Organs, when the doctors give the result.
9. Can Reduce Depression
Many scientific explorations have said many things about the relationship between coffee and depression. But most of them showed that caffeine can reduce the outbreak of depression or sadness. Some even say that coffee can abate the number of suicides.
How does that happen? It’s because coffee is known as a stimulant. It compensates for activities in our central nervous system. It can improve our mood and help us feel more productive by blocking neurotransmitter adenosine receptors, enhancing excitability in our brain.
10. Minimizes the Risk of Colorectal Cancer
Colorectal or colon cancer, which is also known as bowel cancer and rectal cancer is a kind of cancer that attacks the colon and the rectum. Caffeine has various bioactive mixtures that are topical to colon physiology.
Some researchers also say that coffee consumption might aviate the chances of having liver and colon cancer by 40%
11. Doesn’t Cause Heart Disease and Can Minimize the Risk of Stroke
Some new analyses of the country’s biggest running scientific and medical studies suggest that consuming coffee can help to curtail the risk of heart disease or heart failure.
Now, because coffee has caffeine content, it can be risky or dangerous for people with severe heart disease or hypertension but if you don’t have any allergy to caffeine, then you don’t need to worry.
By the way, many researches have shown that consuming 2-4 cups of coffee per day can actually be correlative with reducing stroke risk.
12. Great Source of Antioxidants
Coffee is a great source of disease-fighting antioxidants. Some studies proved that coffee might help reduce cavities, boost athleticism, improve our moods, and prevent headaches, and I’ve already mentioned the usefulness of coffee for Type-2 diabetes, Colon cancer, liver problems, and Parkinson’s’ disease above.
Final words
So, after talking about all the good things about coffee, we can’t deny the fact that all these benefits will work if we drink the right amount of coffee per day. Because consuming too much coffee is always a bad thing.
Moreover, it contains caffeine, so drinking coffee too much can increase blood pressure, create chances of having heart disease, can cause headaches, etc. That’s why we have to be careful while drinking coffee and using it for good.
I believe I have provided enough information to let you decide “Is coffee healthy?”. Now, it’s your turn to consume the right amount of coffee to get the utmost benefit from this stunning liquid refreshment.
