Coffee is, without a doubt, the most popular beverage in the world.
Every morning, billions of cups of coffee are consumed around the world from Alaska to North Korea.
It is part of millions of people’s daily morning routine, and the coffee industry is one of the biggest in the world.
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Why is coffee so popular?
Some would argue that, beyond its delicious taste, we drink coffee because of caffeine.
Caffeine is a stimulant; it wakes us up, makes us feel more energetic.
The story is that, when it was first discovered, coffee was immediately thought of as a powerful, medicinal drink. Monks used to drink it at nighttime to boost praying sessions, and believed it helped them stay as healthy as possible during those long, tiring sessions of prayer.
Since then, people have seen the value of coffee as an energy booster and once a drink that was mostly only known in Africa and the Middle East, coffee has effectively conquered the hearts of the whole world.
So there’s a lot of value in consuming caffeine and it’s why most people drink coffee in the morning.
But caffeine actually has many other effects on our body beyond waking us up. Some are good, some not so much. In this article, we’ll go over how exactly caffeine affects our bodies.
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Effects of caffeine on your body
The effects of coffee and more specifically caffeine are luckily very well documented in science.
People have been drinking coffee for centuries and yet it is only in recent decades that we have gotten actual proof that coffee is more than just a tasty beverage.
Here, a list of the top five most interesting effects that caffeine can have on your body and, ultimately, your health.
#1 Caffeine helps you lose weight
Caffeine can help boost your metabolism. This means that it increases the amount of calories your body burns passively.
Some studies show that coffee can increase your metabolism up to 10%, meaning that you could be burning around 79 calories daily without having to do any extra exercise!
That may not seem like much, but it’s actually quite a significant amount in the grand scheme of things; particularly if you take into account that it’s a passive thing.
You’re losing weight by literally drinking something.
It’s the opposite of how it usually works.
#2 Caffeine helps you live longer
The mechanism of how exactly coffee helps you live longer hasn’t been figured out yet. It might be because it contains plenty of antioxidants, which protect you and your body against the effects of aging.
Whatever the reason, it seems that coffee is a factor in helping people live longer. Particularly people with diabetes 2, coffee seems to protect them against death from natural causes like heart attack and stroke.
#3 It may protect you from cancer
While coffee is linked to decreased risk of many different forms of cancer, coffee lovers see a drop of up to 64% the risk of liver cancer than in their non-coffee-loving peers.
Something similar happens with colorectal cancer, decreasing risk by up to 34% for people who drink coffee frequently.
As we mentioned earlier, coffee is packers with antioxidants, which also help fight free radicals.
These are responsible for start a chain reaction in your body that ultimately leads to cancer, which is why coffee is such a key ingredient in decreasing cancer risk.
Coffee is the most important source of antioxidants in the western diet.
#4 It may protect you from heart disease
This one may sound a little counterintuitive. After all, caffeine is a stimulant that speeds up your heart and many heart doctors advise to keep away from it if you already suffer from a heart condition or if you’re anxious, etc.
But it turns out that a moderate dose of caffeine isn’t actually linked to any sort of heart disease. In fact, coffee has been shown to protect against certain kinds of heart disease.
#5 Caffeine just helps you perform better
When it comes to exercise, coffee is seen as a performance-booster. That means that it can make you exercise better and for longer.
Coffee -and caffeine in particular- is responsible for a wide array of effects on your muscles particularly that make it a good companion for your workout sessions— it is no coincidence that most pre-workout supplements have caffeine in them.
Firstly, coffee helps you tolerate fatigue better. It energizes you and ups your physically endurance in general.
Most importantly, however, studies have shown that coffee improves your physical performance by up to 5%.
Conclusion
There is no real answer as to whether coffee is good or bad for you. There are studies that can back both statements, as it happens with a myriad other foods and substances.
The important thing that we all should take away from this conversation is that coffee is good for certain things and that, if taken in reasonable amounts, it is actually good for you.
But like anything else, if overdone, caffeine consumption can indeed have a negative impact both in your body and your mind.
As long as you practice moderation, it should be okay.
Science has proved, time and again, that caffeine can actually have many beneficial effects on your body.
From protecting you from cancer to enhancing your workout sessions, coffee can actually mean a very positive impact on your life whether visible or not.
Besides, coffee is just delicious. It’s already very good for you and on top of that it’s so easy to introduce to our routine because it tastes so good. Coffee might just be the best superfood out there just because of this!
Know the old saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”? Well, that might just be as true with coffee!
