10 Health Benefits Of Drinking Coffee

Good old coffee. It doesn’t matter if you’re sipping a freshly brewed coffee from your Jura home coffee machine to kick start your day or perhaps enjoying a punchy expresso on your coffee break at the office. Whatever the situation, it’s hard to picture a single day deprived of coffee.

Caffeine sprites you up while there’s something unbelievably comforting about sipping a heart-warming cuppa… Yet, is drinking coffee actually doing any good to you?

Win-Win Situation: Coffee lifts you up and boosts your health

That daily dose of coffee is doing much more to your body besides that early pick-me-up push! Studies have indicated that coffee is more than a popular and tasty morning hot drink. Its components can aid in protecting your body against conditions such as heart diseases or Alzheimer’s.

Though we think of caffeine as the key substance to coffee, there’s much more in a cup of joe; Antioxidants and other elements present in your steamy coffee help to reduce core inflammation and shield against several health conditions.

1.    Coffee is a powerful source of beneficial antioxidants

Coffee displays more antioxidant activity than green tea or cocoa, two of the most popular sources of antioxidants. Researchers have recognised around 1,000 antioxidants in unrefined coffee beans and hundreds more to grow during the beans’ roasting. Several studies have also pointed to coffee as a significant — and on some occasions, the main — nutritional source of antioxidants for its subjects.

2.    Caffeine delivers a short-term memory boost

For research purposes, a group of volunteers were administered with a dose of 100 milligrams of caffeine, approximately as much as you find in a single cup of coffee. Austrian scientists noticed a surge in the individuals’ brain activity through functional magnetic resonance imagery (fMRI), as they executed a memory exercise. The researchers also pointed out that in the volunteers under the caffeine group, memory skills and reaction times were also enhanced compared to the placebo control group, which displayed no difference in brain activity.

3.    Coffee can help to protect against cognitive decay

Besides providing a momentary boost in memory and brain activity, regular coffee intake may help avoid cognitive decline related to Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. One promising Finnish research found that drinking three to five cups of coffee a day at midlife was linked with a 65 per-cent decrease in the risk of Alzheimer’s or dementia later in life. Remarkably, the study conductors also gauged the effect of drinking tea on cognitive decline but couldn’t find any association.

4.    Coffee is good for your heart

A breakthrough study in the Netherlands, which investigated data from over 37.000 individuals during a 13-year period, identified that moderate coffee drinkers (those consuming from two to four daily cups) had 20 per-cent less risk of heart conditions when compared to heavy and light coffee drinkers as well as non-coffee drinkers.

5.    Coffee aids in curbing certain cancers

Men who drink coffee have been linked to being at a lower risk of developing severe prostate cancer. Furthermore, new research from Harvard University suggested that drinking no less than four cups of coffee daily mitigated the risk of endometrial cancer in women by 25 per-cent as compared to women who would consume less than one cup daily. Scholars have also linked regular coffee drinking to lower numbers of breast, liver, colon and rectal cancer.

6.    Coffee might reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes

A rising body of research establishes an association between coffee drinking and a lower risk of diabetes. A study from 2009 noted that the risk of developing diabetes fell by 7 per-cent for each cup of coffee every day. Former epidemiological studies stated that heavy coffee drinkers (those regularly drinking four or more cups a day) have a 50 per-cent lower chance of developing diabetes than non-drinkers or light coffee drinkers.

7.    Coffee is your liver’s best friend

It’s true: On top of lowering the risk of liver cancer, coffee drinking has been associated with a low rate of cirrhosis, particularly alcoholic cirrhosis. Research in the Archives of Internal Medicine confirmed an inverse correlation between augmented coffee consumption and a reduced risk of cirrhosis — a 20 per-cent decrease to each cup of coffee consumed (by up to four cups).

8.    Coffee can improve your workout performance

We have been accustomed to accepting as true that caffeine is dehydrating, thus being one of the main reasons why fitness experts recommend avoiding coffee pre-and post-workout. However, new research proves that moderate caffeine consumption – up to about 500 mg, which is around five cups a day — does not dry up exercisers’ organisms anywhere near enough to inhibit their workout. Actually, since coffee aids in battling fatigue, it enables you to exercise for longer.

9.    Coffee battles depression

Numerous studies have related coffee drinking to lower numbers of depression in both men and women. In multiple researches, the data noted an inverse relationship between coffee drinking and depression – putting it another way, heavy coffee drinkers seem to have the lowest risk of depression by about 20 per-cent.

10.  Coffee protects against gout

Independent research on coffee consumption patterns in both men and women suggests that consuming coffee regularly decreases the risk of developing gout.

Investigators in the Nurses’ Health Study studied the health habits of closely 90,000 female nurses over a timeframe of 26 years. They found a positive link between long-term coffee drinking and a reduced risk for gout. The benefit was found in both regular and decaf consumption – women who took more than four cups of normal coffee per day had a 57 per-cent lower risk of gout; a decrease of 22 per-cent to those who drank between one and three cups a day. And one daily cup of decaf was linked with a 23 per-cent decreased risk of gout when compared to the women who didn’t consume any coffee at all.

Similar results have been documented for men. Another extensive study, issued in the Arthritis & Rheumatism journal, stated that men who took four to five cups of coffee daily cut their risk of gout by 40 per-cent, while those who drank six cups or higher dropped gout risk by 60 per-cent.