If you are anything like me, mornings do not start until that first cup of coffee. In the past, coffee has gotten a bad rap. It raises your heart rate, increases blood pressure, has the ability to make you irritable and can create restlessness at night. So as I was sipping my cup this morning, I decided to do a little research and find out if this little pleasure of mine was hurting my health. What I found was pleasantly surprising.
Researchers from Harvard gathered some research on over 193,000 people and their coffee habits. The research showed that regular coffee drinkers had a significantly lower risk of developing Type II diabetes than those subjects who did not drink any coffee. Another study found in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reported that healthy people over the age of 65 that drank four or more caffeinated beverages a day had a 53% lower risk of heart disease than non-coffee drinkers.
Additionally, coffee is packed with more antioxidants per serving than blueberries! These antioxidants can help decrease inflammation- which may help to explain the decrease in diabetes and heart disease. The caffeine in coffee has also been shown to reduce the risk of Parkinson’s disease, gallstones, cirrhosis and liver cancer.
This sounds great, but what about when it raises my heart rate and blood pressure? That can’t be good, right? Frank Hu, M.D., Ph. D, an associate professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health, says that those effects are “short-lived” and most people become tolerant of them.
However, if you already have high blood pressure, have a discussion with your doctor about your caffeine intake. You may be more sensitive to its effects.
The long term benefits may then outweigh these side effects. However, Dr. Hu doesn’t recommend turning to coffee to prevent disease. For those already dealing with heart disease or new moms that choose to nurse, they may want to rethink they amount of coffee being consumed. For most people though, drinking two cups of coffee a day should be just fine.
This is great news for me! Now I can enjoy my morning coffee guilt-free.
Source: “Good News about Coffee”, MSN Health
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