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Thursday, November 26, 2015

Life Hacker- More Good News About Coffee



The Science Behind Coffee and Why it's Actually Good for Your Health

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Kris Gunnars
Filed to: COFFEE2/25/13 7:00am
The Science Behind Coffee and Why it's Actually Good for Your Health
Coffee isn't just warm and energizing, it may also be extremely good for you. In recent years, scientists have studied the effects of coffee on various aspects of health and their results have been nothing short of amazing. 
Here's why coffee may actually be one of the healthiest beverages on the planet.

Coffee Can Make You Smarter

Coffee doesn't just keep you awake, it may literally make you smarter as well. The active ingredient in coffee is caffeine, which is a stimulant and the most commonly consumed psychoactive substance in the world. Caffeine's primary mechanism in the brain is blocking the effects of an inhibitory neurotransmitter called Adenosine. By blocking the inhibitory effects of Adenosine, caffeine actually increases neuronal firing in the brain and the release of other neurotransmitters like dopamine and norepinephrine (1, 2). Many controlled trials have examined the effects of caffeine on the brain, demonstrating that caffeine can improve mood, reaction time, memory, vigilance and general cognitive function (3).
Bottom Line: Caffeine potently blocks an inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain, leading to a net stimulant effect. Controlled trials show that caffeine improves both mood and brain function.

Coffee Can Help You Burn Fat and Improves Physical Performance

There's a good reason why you will find caffeine in most commercial fat burning supplements. Caffeine, partly due to its stimulant effect on the central nervous system, both raises metabolism and increases the oxidation of fatty acids (4, 5, 6). Caffeine can also improve athletic performance by several mechanisms, including by mobilizing fatty acids from the fat tissues (7, 8). In two separate meta-analyses, caffeine was found to increase exercise performance by 11-12% on average (9, 10).
Bottom Line: Caffeine raises the metabolic rate and helps to mobilize fatty acids from the fat tissues. It can also enhance physical performance.
The Science Behind Coffee and Why it's Actually Good for Your Health

Coffee May Drastically Lower Your Risk of Type II Diabetes

Type II diabetes is a lifestyle-related disease that has reached epidemic proportions, having increased 10-fold in a few decades and now afflicting about 300 million people. This disease is characterized by high blood glucose levels due to insulin resistance or an inability to produce insulin. In observational studies, coffee has been repeatedly associated with a lower risk of diabetes. The reduction in risk ranges from 23% all the way up to 67% (11, 12, 13, 14). A massive review article looked at 18 studies with a total of 457,922 participants. Each additional cup of coffee per day lowered the risk of diabetes by 7%. The more coffee people drank, the lower their risk (15).
Bottom Line: Drinking coffee is associated with a drastically reduced risk of type II diabetes. People who drink several cups per day are the least likely to become diabetic.

Coffee May Lower Your Risk of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's

Not only can coffee make you smarter in the short term, it may also protect your brain in old age. Alzheimer's disease is the most common neurodegenerative disorder in the world and a leading cause of dementia. In prospective studies, coffee drinkers have up to a 60% lower risk of Alzheimer's and dementia (16, 17, 18). Parkinson's is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder, characterized by death of dopamine-generating neurons in the brain. Coffee may lower the risk of Parkinson's by 32-60% (19, 20, 21, 22).
Bottom Line: Coffee is associated with a much lower risk of dementia and the neurodegenerative disorders Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
The Science Behind Coffee and Why it's Actually Good for Your Health

Coffee May be Extremely Good For Your Liver

The liver is a remarkable organ that carries out hundreds of vital functions in the body. It is very vulnerable to modern insults such as excess consumption of alcohol and fructose. Cirrhosis is the end stage of liver damage caused by diseases like alcoholism and hepatitis, where liver tissue has been largely replaced by scar tissue. Multiple studies have shown that coffee can lower the risk of cirrhosis by as much as 80%, the strongest effect for those who drank 4 or more cups per day (23, 24, 25). Coffee may also lower the risk of liver cancer by around 40% (26, 27).
Bottom Line: Coffee appears to be protective against certain liver disorders, lowering the risk of liver cancer by 40% and cirrhosis by as much as 80%.

Coffee May Decrease Your Risk of Dying

Many people still seem to think that coffee is unhealthy. This isn't surprising though, since it is very common for conventional wisdom to be at exact odds with what the actual studies say. In two very large prospective epidemiological studies, drinking coffee was associated with a lower risk of death by all causes (28). This effect is particularly profound in type II diabetics, one study showing that coffee drinkers had a 30% lower risk of death during a 20 year period (29).
Bottom Line: Coffee consumption has been associated with a lower risk of death in prospective epidemiological studies, especially in type II diabetics.
The Science Behind Coffee and Why it's Actually Good for Your Health

Coffee is Loaded With Nutrients and Antioxidants

Coffee isn't just black water. Many of the nutrients in the coffee beans do make it into the final drink, which actually contains a decent amount of vitamins and minerals.
A cup of coffee contains (30):
6% of the RDA for Pantothenic Acid (Vitamin B5).
11% of the RDA for Riboflavin (Vitamin B2).
2% of the RDA for Niacin (B3) and Thiamine (B1).
3% of the RDA for Potassium and Manganese.
May not seem like much, but if you drink several cups of coffee per day then this quickly adds up.
But this isn't all. Coffee also contains a massive amount of antioxidants. In fact, coffee is the biggest source of antioxidants in the western diet, outranking both fruits and vegetables combined (31, 32, 33).
Bottom Line: Coffee contains a decent amount of several vitamins and minerals. It is also the biggest source of antioxidants in the modern diet.

Take Home Message

Even though coffee in moderate amounts is good for you, drinking way too muchof it can still be harmful. I'd also like to point out that many of the studies above were epidemiological in nature. Such studies can only show association, they can not prove that coffee caused the effects. To make sure to preserve the health benefits, don't put sugar or anything nasty in your coffee! If it tends to affect your sleep, then don't drink it after 2pm. At the end of the day, it does seem quite clear that coffee is NOT the villain it was made out to be. If anything, coffee may literally be the healthiest beverage on the planet.
Why is Coffee Good For You? Here are 7 Reasons | Authority Nutrition
Kristjan Gunnarsson is a medical student, professional blogger, certified personal trainer and a fitness and health enthusiast. His main passions in life are health and nutrition and he contributes to Authority Nutrition every week, with fresh ideas on weight loss, nutrition, and the things that are required to gain optimal health.
Image via Shutterstock.
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  • crashfrogKris Gunnars
    2/25/13 9:12am
    Coffee also contains a massive amount of antioxidants. 
    That may be true, but there's no evidence that antioxidants are the cause of any positive health outcome or are beneficial in any substantive way. Repeated studies have failed to find any symptom or illness or deficiency for which antioxidants are an effective treatment, and despite the omnipresence of "antioxidants" in the American diet - they're literally in everything more complex than pure starch or sucrose - we have among the highest rates of cancer and heart disease in the developed world.
    Stop saying "antioxidants" like it's a synonym for "healthy." They probably can't hurt, but your intuition that "antioxidants are good for you" isn't driven by any research, it's driven by a concerted marketing effort meant to imply health without actually making any tangible (and therefore testable) claim.
    Reply
    • austin.daccicrashfrog
      2/25/13 10:29am
      I believe you re the one interpreting the science of antioxidants wrong. They are not cures for anything, rather the are more of a preventative maintenance for your body. They quench free radicals and oxidation reactions in the body which in turn prevents damage. Oh, and there is TONS of research to back that up.
      Reply
      • crashfrogaustin.dacci
        2/25/13 11:04am
        Any organic compound with even a single pi bond will quench a free radical in vitro. That's just basic organic chemistry. But there's absolutely no evidence that there are any substantial health negatives to your body's intrinsic production of free radicals, no evidence that consumption of antioxidants is prophylactic against oxidative damage within your cells, and there's no plausible pathway by which you consume an antioxidant and your body recognizes it as such and transports it into your mitochondria to neutralize the free radicals generated there by oxidative phosphorylation.
        There's just no "there", there. Antioxidants probably can't harm you - though they are anti-nutrients; they'll interfere with uptake of other nutritive compounds - but there's just zero evidence that regular dietary consumption of antioxidants has any effect at all. It's basically just a way to market foods as "healthy" without actually making a testable claim that they are.
        Reply
          • crashfrogColdMagneticSun
            2/26/13 7:21am
            I'm just a person with a degree in biochemistry. And when I look around at what passes for the state of the art in nutrition, it turns out that it's nothing but a series of myths and marketing slogans that has no grounding in human biochemical reality or experimental evidence.
            Drinking pomegranite juice or eating more tomatoes isn't going to harm you. If you like those things, feel free. And eating a lot of carb-y calories with little in the way of vitamins isn't going to feel good or be good for you. But you doharm yourself when you stress out about not eating enough tomatoes, or spending a fortune on juices, or making sure your carrots are organic, or whatever the food-scare is this month. These food-marketing trends are backed by no science at all, but they can cause real harm - like the vast expansion in American obesity rates (and associated morbidities) caused by 20 years of evidence-free certainty that carbohydrates were less fattening than fats.
            Reply
          • fritzk33Kris Gunnars
            2/25/13 7:42am
            Sorry, but I am not buying the research that says that drinking coffee reduces your risk of getting Parkinson's Disease. My dad and uncle (twin brothers) have both been drinking coffee just about every day of their adult lives, and both (now in their mid-60s) have Parkinson's disease. I believe other medically-related factors have a much stronger influence.
            Reply
              • cgillesfritzk33
                2/25/13 7:50am
                reduction in risk doesnt mean people wont get it. Just because you have a lower risk, the chance is still there. Think about a coin, the odds of getting heads is 50%, but that doesnt mean getting 3 or 4 or more in a row of tails means the odd's are wrong.
                Reply
                • binaryvisionsfritzk33
                  2/25/13 7:58am
                  Did you really just say the research isn't accurate because two people who are genetically similar both got Parkinson's?
                  Sigh... There are so many things wrong with that, it's hard to know where to start.
                  Reply
                  • BTownTKDKris Gunnars
                    2/25/13 8:14am
                    "Coffee May Decrease Your Risk of Dying"
                    I don't care how much coffee you drink, your risk of dying is still 100%.
                    Reply
                  • Meetloaf13Kris Gunnars
                    2/25/13 10:44am
                    Not hacking my life with this bundle of "May Helps".
                    How many of you get caffeine withdrawals?
                    How many of you can't operate during the day without at least one cup of Joe? (if not several)
                    How many "negative effects of coffee/caffeine" articles do you think we could rummage up? Especially of the "may" variety?
                    Reply

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