Good Morning! Do You Drink Coffee? How Much?
The media loves to talk about vices turned virtues, and an article like this one in the Daily Beast that asks “Can Coffee Save Your Life?” is no different. But, as an admitted lover of the brew, I am always excited to see new studies on its supposed health benefits. According to this piece, it has over a dozen “miraculous” benefits. Read the full thing, or see my abridged list below.
There seem to be some meaningful stats, but could coffee drinkers be benefiting from other lifestyle choices? Probably. And while six cups may reduce chance of diabetes, what in the heck is it doing to anxiety levels?
Do you believe the hype? Are you a coffee lover or hater?
Some stats from the piece:
1. Drinking more than three cups a day has shown to reduce a certain kind of skin cancer in 20% of women.
2. Drinking one to five cups lowers risk of stroke by 25%.
3. Drinking four cups a day reduces risk of depression in women by 20%
4. Drinking more than six cups (six cups!) a day means you’re 35% less likely to get type 2 diabetes than those who drink a measly two cups. (Yeah, cause who has time to eat when they’re drinking that much coffee.)
5. Drinking more than four cups a day reduces risk of developing liver cirrhosis by 80%.
I like #5:
Drinking more than four cups a day reduces risk of developing liver cirrhosis by 80%.
That will certainly counteract the 4 glasses of wine I have a night! ;)
Love coffee. LOVE it. Hate it that I love it tho, so ritually force myself to abstain now and again. I’m down to a cup (okay one very large cup) a day and I still get wicked withdrawals when I cut it out. Speaking of which, I really want a cup of good coffee right now. Love it!
I love the taste of coffee, but I don’t drink it. I steer clear of caffeine for the most part and coffee just ends up makes me jittery and makes my hands tremble/shake. I feel like studies like those you’ve mentioned are great at justifying a coffee habit (or wine, etc.), but they ignore the other, negative effects that drinking multiple cups of coffee daily will inevitably have on a person’s health.
This is a question always asked by my physician and it is tricky, because the question should be how many ounces do you drink a day. Is it a giganto-grande-big-gulp sized cup or a true 8 ounce cup? That being said, I drink about 36 ounces of coffee per day, half decaf and freshly ground. I love coffee and never realized it until I quit cold turkey. I am currently trying to cut back to 24 ounces, because of sleeping problems and general jitteriness, but that is a whole different issue.
It is extremely windy today (25-40 mph), which kills my sinuses, **requiring** more caffiene than normal, perhaps. I am with Mimi, I would love another cup right now.
While I do LOVE coffee, I have put it aside for the most part for the last year. I was taking Zyrtec-D and drinking a bunch of coffee every morning for about 6 years. That plus a super-stressful job & I was having anxiety attacks all day every day for almost a year.
I quit that job a year ago, got off the Zyrtec-D this summer (switched to Omnaris and hope to be free of that one day) and now I can’t bring myself to drink coffee anymore!! It triggers all of that calamity within me.
I do find that I crave a cup of coffee in the afternoons, but I usually resist & the craving passes. I basically only drink water now, unless I am having chamomile tea & I am much happier!
#4 cracks me up. So true.
I can only agree to what Caitie said: it might have loads of benefits, BUT it also has lots of negative effects. Therefore I try to not drink more than one or two cups a day. And why is it that so many people, including myself, don’ t feel like drinking any coffee at all when being down with a flue or cold?! Our body most of the times does know what’s right, doesn’t it.
I’m a tea drinker. I like the smell of coffee, but I just don’t like the taste. Too much caffeine for me in coffee as well. I think tea has more health benefits, and less caffeine, and I won’t be switching to coffee anytime soon:)
I drink 1 to 2 coffee cups, but I mix with no fat milk, as I don’t like it pure.
It’s great to wake up.
MMMMMM…..coffee. How I adore thee and thy fragrant tantalization.
So, here is the question….I met with a Dr Haushka rep last week who looked at my face and told me that I needed to remove caffeine from my diet. I currently only have one cup (of fabulous, bold, espresso based coffee) per day. When my face breaks out in stunning acne it is primarily located below my lips in the jowl zone. The rep said that this is because caffeine taxes the system. Is there any basis here? Thoughts?
I looove coffee but often have a feeling I drink too much of it (I’m not very good in \reducing\, it’s always all or nothing for me…). When I manage to steer clear of coffee for a longer time, I sure feel calmer but I also immediately see positive changes in how my skin looks like. Do you have the same or is it just me?
Just for the record, I mostly take my coffee black, no milk, no sugar.
I’m with @mbelle – coffee smells great, but I’ve never liked to drink it. I’m all about the tea. Coffee was one of the smells I actually liked when I was pregnant, it helped me feel less nauseated – so while I wouldn’t recommend pregnant women drinking it, you might carry around some beans to sniff!
I love me some coffee! But I am a coffe snob. I really only like my hazlenut creme and spice, freshly ground coffee. I drink three large cups each morning and I enjoy every single sip. I’ve gotten down to just a dusting of turbinado sugar in each mug. I feel pretty virtuous!
I start my day with 1 filter coffee, then through the day at work I might have one or two decaff instant coffees. I drink it black. The rest of the time, I drink green tea, miso soup, and hot water with lemon to get me through the day.
LOVE coffee. Love the smell, the taste, the warmth on a cold day… But what is it in the coffee that is actually giving these benefits they list? I have to be very careful of my coffee intake – while I’d like to drink it as if it were water, the caffeine ruins me. I have one (admittedly very large) coffee in the morning and that’s it for me. Overdosing on coffee, for me, means nausea, headaches and jumping about like I’m on cocaine (or how I imagine I’d be if I ever tried cocaine). I don’t believe there are any benefits in that. I do go for decaf sometimes but can still feel some of the hyper / jittery effects so I don’t believe that decaf is truly caffeine free.
I don’t know, I’m not sold and I won’t be increasing my coffee intake anytime soon!
I save coffee for special occasions. It smells wonderful but I’ll go into Starbucks, inhale deeply, and order a cup of tea! I’ll have a cup of decaf at a restaurant – after a big meal the effects are minimized. But it makes my stomach acid and makes me jittery.
wow— these results are crazy.
I do love coffee, and I do drink it every day. I love my espresso so so much! But, under what conditions were the people who had the tests run? What are their habits? and I mean all: sexual, diet, exercise, environment surrounding them, jobs, medical history, and so on… This is why “studies” are always sketchy to me, and not so accurate. I mean, what are the chances that the same things might happen to me? 1 in 10? 1 in 100?
I really can’t imagine living without coffee. I’ve done a lot of diet tweaking here and there over the last few years but caffeine in coffee form is the one vice I just cannot do without. I can go gluten free, grain free, dairy free, legume free, meat free, dye free, and even (horrors!) completely refined sugar and fructose free! But not coffee free.
That said I do get extremely jittery and I feel terrible if I have more than three cups a day, especially if that’s on a more or less empty stomach.
I’m 29 and have no children, so I dread the day my doctors tell me I have to cut it out for health reasons whether they relate to pregnancy or other conditions. I feel certain that day is coming though. I keep seeing these studies that say it’s beneficial but I have to say, I just don’t buy it.
Oh yes. Shamelessly and happily addicted. I suppose I should try to give it up to see if my skin improves, but I just don’t know if I can make that sacrifice …. the resulting unhappiness might make my skin poor anyway, so then it’d all balance out, right?
Drink on.
@Moksha- that’s very interesting what the dh rep said about the lower face/chin/jowl breakouts being related to caffeine intake. that is where i tend to break out as well. i drink about 4 big cups of green tea each morning, which is probably equivalent to 1.5 cups of coffee in the caffeine department. perhaps i’ll try switching to white tea and see if the occasional breakouts subside. did she mention how the system is taxed, eg. adrenal glands? keep us posted! :)
As much as coffee is extremely delicious and comforting, I think that the negative effects outweigh the benefits for most people. Coffee is extremely hard on the kidneys and the adrenal glands, two of the most important organs in the body. Because we are drinking it for energy, coffee actually causes a viscous cycle of fatigue… weak kidneys and adrenals definitely cause fatigue and morning brain fog among a few things. Finally it is very dehydrating. For every cup of coffee you drink you need to drink 8 ounces of water… now after drinking half your weight in ounces of water a day that is a lot to add in.
So coffee is for a treat in my opinion :) I will save my career of being a coffee taster for my next lifetime. I will stick to yerba mate and guarana for now.
I haven’t had coffee in almost two years, but when I went back to work after baby number two in two years I needed a little help to get me moving at the pace of my toddler after an all nighter with the newborn. And I need to be able to function at work, that is what they pay me for. So I drink a rather large cup (12ish oz) of half caffeinated coffee and it seems to do the trick. I do love the taste and smell and with the cold coming on I can see where that one large cup might extend to two!
I hate coffee…. and I seem to be a minority. The only coffee I like is an Ice Cappuccino from Tim Hortons.. which is about as health as having a lot of caffeine with a lot of sugar and a lot of creme. I limit myself to about 4 a year, generally on days i can’t keep awake. lol
I drink herbal teas primarily… naturally non-caffinated. Once in a while I will have a really nice chai tea (with caffeine) but I’m not a caffeine addict by any stretch of the imagination.
As for studies like that.. they are all ‘correlational’ and cannot prove causation.
If I drink my coffee, which is supposed to be beneficial, with the alcohol that is supposed to increase the risk of breast cancer, will they offset one another? I’m just saying . . .
(Sorry for the morning snark, but one thing is good for you one week and bad for you the next. What’s a girl to do?)
@Sophie Yes, please do let me know if switching to white tea produces any changes. It was specifically the adrenal glands that the rep was referring to regarding what was primarily being taxed.
I gave up a heavy coffee habit in 2001–I used to start the day with 4 cups of coffee & 3 espressos at home, then more throughout the day. The migraines for 3 days nearly as bad as childbirth and I vowed to never have to deal with that again.
I still get coffee from the roaster I loved in college, http://www.portorico.com, but instead of Cafe Blend, it’s now Swiss Water Processed Decaffeinated Fair Trade Bird Friendly Organic. I accidentally had a cup of regular coffee yesterday and was wired with my hart beating rapidly and a fun, tense frontal lobe tensing.
My usual brews now are decaf green tea, rooibos, or ginger. After pregnancy, it was red raspbery leaf, which purportedly tones the uterus but tastes terrible; I added a healthy dose of cinnamon and a bag of decaf green to it to make it palatable.
Oh, coffee studies! How is it possible for coffee to be both good for my heart meanwhile thrusting me into arrhythmic freak outs? (my lover, coffee, has always made my heart skip a beat). Not to mention, my kidneys! Ever heard of renal fatigue? And when discussing coffee as an antidepressant, I must agree. I feel like a giddy nut job after a few cups. However, see me after the “come down” –I wonder if researchers have ever looked at that…?
@Rebecca-just curious why you don’t recommend pregnant women drinking it? I have pregnant coffee drinking friends, so just want to inform them.
I LOVE coffee. I went from drinking 4, 16 oz coffees with cream and 4 sugars a day when I was in college to about 1/4 of a cup with cream no sugar today. I just cant give it up. I love the taste. Oh I also have to add when I drank all that coffee, I also didn’t drink any other fluid except alcohol. Talk about unhealthy. I hated (still do) the taste of plain water. Now I force it down with lemon slices or orange slices. Amazing how less headaches occur.
@Lindz, most health practitioners would say to minimize caffeine when pregnant due to possible links to miscarriage or negative impacts on fetal growth, etc. I think that generally no more than one cup of coffee a day would be recommended. So, I just wouldn’t want to be the one telling a pregnant woman to drink coffee. My point was mainly that if you are trying to combat nausea it’s the smell that’s key. I would think that it could upset the stomach more if you drink coffee when feeling icky already.
@Moksha & Sophie, I am thinking in traditional chinese medicine the breakouts are most of the time caused by the energy coming from the liver, which is a great deal of the time affected by acidity (which in our case we are talking about coffee)
I love coffee. With a passion. I start every single day with a large cup of coffee, and usually follow up with another large coffee in the early afternoon. (Sometimes I have a Red Bull in the later afternoon, but that’s another story!) I stay caffeinated all day, if I can help it. I’ll admit, I drink mostly Green Mountain coffee or Dunkin Donuts (although my favorite is the Doughnut Inn, a local chain with awesome coffee)…. not exactly the healthiest options, but they keep me going.
I agree with Avigayil that these studies show correlations, but cannot prove causation, and must therefore be taken with a grain of salt. It’s tough to do a definite study on something with sooo many uncontrollable factors, from the source/production of the coffee to the lifestyle of the drinker, and everything in between.
Thanks Rebecca! I appreciate your insight.
I love love love coffee…but I hate the anxiety attacks it gives me! I quit a 3 year coffee habit 2 months ago (breaking up with a coffee addicted boyfriend made it easier) and went back to my first love – tea!
I don’t drink coffee but it it great for enemas. Your health benefits without the side effects.
I adore the smell of coffee. But, as some of you mentioned, only the smell. The taste is, for me, repulsive and even if it wasn’t, the effect caffeine has on me… picture the Energizer bunny, manic and on crack, and that’s me on caffeine. I do drink various loose leaf teas but the oolong and green are strictly regulated. I have also found that combining sugar and caffeine tends to amplify caffeine’s effects in me (the one time I drank coffee it had an obscene amount of sugar in it and soda has the same effect.)
Recently, though, it was suggested I consider adding a bit of caffeine (in some form) into my diet because of what seem to be low blood pressure issues. I am working with my doctor (an unfortunately slow and aggravating process) but was wondering if anyone had thoughts on that. Thanks
Let’s just say that I make at least two trips to Starbucks a day! I love coffee, it keeps me and my sanity going. :)
I’ve never been too big on coffee, but when I would have it, I’d have to drink loads of water with or it would upset my stomach. Recently, I became a regular though. But, while the great feeling of being awake was hard to forego, I had to stop cold turkey because I was getting the worst heartburn of my life (I could barely drink water without getting heartburn after a month of drinking coffee, just 5 cups/week). The heartburn is thankfully gone. Won’t be going back to coffee any time soon; I’ll stick with my tea.