Coffee Is Healthy? - The Health Benefits Of Coffee

By Bill Jamison


Coffee contains many complex chemicals that have both beneficial and detrimental effects on your body.

The link which was once thought to exist between coffee, heart disease, cancer and other diseases may have been largely due to the participants in earlier studies on coffee being smokers as well as coffee drinkers.

Recent scientific research indicates that the health benefits of coffee may outweigh its risks, when it is taken in moderation. The primary reason for this change in thinking is that many coffee drinkers in the older studies also smoked cigarettes, making it difficult to separate the health effects of these two substances.

Caffeine is the best known psychoactive substance in coffee and caffeine is responsible for many of the effects of coffee, for both good and ill. Individuals who consume four or more cups of coffee daily may experience side effects including anxiety, irritability and difficulty sleeping, although these effects are largely limited to people who are sensitive to caffeine. The results of the studies performed thus far seem to indicate that in order to derive the maximum benefits from coffee, consumption should be limited to two or three cups daily and that the beverage should be taken without milk or sugar.

Coffee increases your alertness, which can be beneficial for certain tasks. A scientific study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that caffeine improves the ability of students to detect grammatical errors in written text, especially errors in verb tense and subject verb agreement. The same study did not show an improvement in the students' ability to detect misspelled words.

A Harvard University study also found a correlation between coffee consumption and a lower risk of depression in women. The study, published in The Archives of Internal Medicine, found that women who drank two to three cups of coffee per day had a 15% lower risk of developing depression, while those who drank four or more cups per day experienced a 20% lower risk of depression. The lower risk of depression in women who drink coffee regularly is thought to be due to caffeine's effects on regulating the release of neurotransmitters which affect mood.

One of the ingredients in coffee may also reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease in mice, according to a study published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease. The specific substance has not been identified, but the study did show that coffee increases the level of Granulocyte Colony Stimulating Factor, which is believed to fight Alzheimer's disease. The amount of coffee used in this study was the human equivalent of four to five cups.

Coffee may also be linked with a lower risk of prostate cancer, according to the results of a Harvard School of Public Health study published in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Men who drank at least six cups of coffee per day were found to have a risk of developing the most deadly form of prostate cancer which was 60% lower than that of the control group. These participants were also found to have a 20% lower risk of all forms of prostate cancer.

Caffeine may also reduce the risk of basal cell carcinoma, which is the most common form of cancer. This finding was recently presented to the American Association for Cancer research. A study at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School also showed that women consuming at least three cups of coffee per day experienced a 20 percent reduction in the risk of skin cancer. The men in this study experienced a 9 percent reduction.




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