The Numerous Health Benefits of Coffee Consumption
More than half the population of adults drink coffee. Some have a coffee habit just first thing in the morning while others drink the beverage all day long. There’s a good reason that coffee helps perk you up and give you long lasting energy. It’s loaded with health benefits.
Coffee Contains Antioxidants
You’ve heard the advice that eating healthy keeps the body healthy. You already know that you should eat your fruit and vegetables because they’re loaded with antioxidants.
This substance fights to keep your body healthy and protect you from certain diseases. It also works to help prevent cell damage. While you can get your antioxidants from the foods that you eat, these items aren’t the only resource for the power of antioxidants, because coffee is a top contender, also.
In fact, some people get antioxidants from the coffee that they drink than from their diet. That cup of coffee that you drink is full of vitamins and minerals. Among these vitamins and minerals, you get Vitamin B5, Vitamin B2, magnesium, potassium and more.
So your daily habit – whether it’s a cup in the morning or several cups throughout the day – gives you plenty of health benefits right from that very first sip. The power is found in quinines and once you make the coffee, your body enjoys those antioxidants.
Not only can the antioxidant properties fight disease on your behalf, but coffee is also known to help keep your teeth healthy. That’s because the ingredients in coffee are a natural cavity fighter.
You can thank the antibacterial ingredient in coffee for keeping you out of the dentist’s chair. If all coffee did was help protect you from diseases and keep your teeth in good condition, that would be more than many food items alone can do.
But the benefits of this beverage don’t just stop there. It’s also a mood booster. While it gives you energy and helps keep fatigue at bay, it also acts as a mood stabilizer so you feel better after you’ve had a cup or two of coffee.
Coffee contains caffeine – and that’s an ingredient that also works to give you health benefits. Not only does it fight back against certain cancers, but it can help prevent headaches.
If you come down with a headache and you drink coffee, you’ll notice that it alleviates your headache. That’s because caffeine is a headache reliever given by nature when it constricts the blood vessels in the brain.
You’ll find that in many headache medications that caffeine is one of the ingredients. Caffeine can also work to help prevent you from getting certain diseases that affect your brain. But it can also be useful in the fight against conditions like gallbladder disease.
Coffee Can Prevent Type 2 Diabetes
Type 2 diabetes is a disease that can be prevented. It’s one of the conditions that is continuing to grow among adults and now children, too. The reasons for this can vary depending on many different factors.
Some people just have a higher chance of getting the condition thanks to family history. It can also be common with certain conditions such as polycystic ovary syndrome or PCOS – which puts women at a higher risk of getting diabetes at some point.
The problem with diabetes doesn’t just rest in the fact that it gives a person the inability to correctly make enough insulin to keep up with the body’s demands. It also leads to health issues throughout the body – including the heart, brain, and eyes.
Coffee can lower those health risks right along with your odds of developing Type 2 diabetes. The beverage contains ingredients that act to prohibit a protein which has been explained as a higher chance of developing the disease.
When you block the build up of this protein, you effectively shut the door on diabetes. Regardless of your family genetics, you can cut your risk in half if you have a coffee habit.
As long as you drink more than a morning cup of coffee, your risk of getting diabetes will be much lower. The ingredients in coffee are so effective against helping to prevent Type 2 diabetes that you can even drink decaffeinated coffee and still reap the same lowered risk benefit.
The good news for people who have a coffee habit throughout the day is that the more you drink the beverage, the more you lower your risk of diabetes. Just don’t load it with high sugar flavorings and it won’t ruin the health benefits.
Coffee Helps Your Liver
The liver is an amazing organ in the body and can regenerate itself. But certain things can impact your liver and cause damage to it. Sometimes this damage can be irreparable.
Some of the things that affect the liver are alcohol, medication, familial diseases and fatty liver disease. You can also develop liver failure. For people who routinely drink alcohol, your liver can become affected by a condition known as cirrhosis of the liver.
While you might think that you have to drink every day and that it takes a lot of alcohol consumption to damage your liver in this way, it actually doesn’t. You don’t have to drink hard or be an alcoholic to develop liver disease, because your body can process alcohol differently than someone else.
It doesn’t matter how old you are or how many years you’ve been drinking. Consuming alcohol puts you at risk of the disease regardless of your lifestyle or family genetics.
The good news about drinking coffee is that if you do have a drinking habit, you lower your odds of developing problems with your liver thanks to the coffee. Having four cups of coffee or more gives you protection against the chance that you’ll end up with cirrhosis of the liver.
Coffee Protects Your Brain
There are numerous things that coffee does for you that help your brain. For starters, it keeps your brain protected against conditions that target it – such as Alzheimer’s Disease.
Having a daily coffee habit lowers your risk of getting this condition. The caffeine in coffee helps protect the brain’s cognitive function. Not only does it reduce your chance of getting Alzheimer’s Disease, but drinking coffee also reduces your risk of age related dementia and diseases that affect your neurological health – such as Parkinson’s disease.
Coffee is a stimulant that keeps your brain active because it accentuates your mental capacity. This is why people who drink coffee suddenly feel more alert, can think clearly and can make it through a day even if they’re tired.
Your brain contains feel good hormones that can determine how you feel emotionally. For people who drink plenty of coffee, you can lower your risk of developing mental disorders such as depression and anxiety.
Coffee has long been associated with helping people feel better. The ingredients in coffee lifts your mood so that you experience feelings of calm. Some studies suggest that the reason the beverage helps with moods is because of the high amount of antioxidants present in coffee.
When you drink coffee, you boost the brain to increase the production of serotonin as well as dopamine – both of which instantly make you feel better. This mood booster acts like a natural antidepressant.
The caffeine contained in coffee not only improves your mood, but it also promotes better overall mental function – including helping with short term memory function.
Coffee boosts your ability to think. You can learn easier when you have coffee in your system. You can also react quicker and better in a situation. This is one reason athletes drink coffee. They perform at a higher level with a coffee habit than without it.
Coffee Lowers Your Risk of Cancer
As long as you’re a regular drinker of it, coffee is one of the easiest and least expensive ways that you can lower your risk of developing certain types of cancer.
It could be that coffee is good for helping prevent some cancers because it contains more than 1,000 chemical compounds. These compounds are what bring all the health benefits to the table.
Coffee works to keep some cancers from developing because the compounds in the coffee offer protection against inflammation – the kind that puts you at risk for cancer.
Cancer can occur because of damaged cells. When you drink four or more cups of coffee a day, the ingredients in the beverage work to block these damaged cells.
While research is still out on the many different kinds of cancer coffee can lower your risk of getting, current research has already established the cancers that coffee can help prevent.
This is good news for both men and women. For men, having a strong coffee habit prevent them from getting prostate cancer. As long as you have four or more cups per day, you can lower your odds of getting this type of cancer by over 50%.
Women who have a four cup or more coffee habit are given more protection against skin cancer – especially against melanoma – one of the deadliest types of skin cancer and the one that affects women far more than it does men.
For both men and women who have a healthy coffee habit, drinking the beverage also offers a lowered risk of getting liver cancer. The compounds in the coffee work to protect this organ.
The liver isn’t the only organ that drinking coffee has some special protection for. Your brain gets more protection if you drink coffee against cancers such as brain cancer.
One type of cancer that can affect both men and women, including young adults is colon cancer. The ingredients in coffee are beneficial to your digestive system – and that includes your colon.
By having a habit of drinking coffee, you can lower your odds of getting colon cancer by more than 25%.
Coffee Protects Your Heart
Today’s lifestyle can be tough on the heart. Not only are people busier than ever with less time to work out and more days filled with stress, but environmental factors can also impact your heart’s health.
Thankfully, if you’re someone who has a regular coffee habit, you can protect your heart from a whole host of different heart related diseases and occurrences. One of the many reasons that coffee is so good for your heart is that the beverage gives you improved blood flow.
This increase in blood flow helps your heart not to have to work so hard to circulate the blood through your veins. The biggest heart benefit is given to people who drink at least three cups of coffee every day.
The occasional coffee drinker doesn’t see as many health benefits overall – including for the heart. Another reason coffee can protect your heart is because it helps keep your arteries from becoming clogged.
It does this by preventing the calcium build up that clogs the arteries. The caffeine in coffee is good for arteries and can even help them be able to work better.
This prevention is one of the key reasons why people who drink at least three cups of coffee a day are less likely to have a heart attack than people who don’t. Besides protecting the arteries, coffee works to prevent the diseases that are considered contributors to heart attacks – such as diabetes.
Not only will you lower your risk of heart disease and of having a heart attack if you have a regular coffee habit, but you also lower your chance of having a stroke.
Some things that can cause you to have heart health problems have to do with what goes on in your everyday life. Situations such as the bills piling up, trouble at work, car or relationship problems can flood your body with cortisol.
These issues can all cause you to live in a state of constant stress. Drinking coffee has been associated with lowering other heart health risk factors such as stress that can cause damage to your heart.
When you drink coffee, it can be a relaxing, nurturing event for you. Studies have shown that drinking coffee can lower your stress levels. By lowering your stress levels, you can lower your blood pressure – which is another factor in causing heart attacks.
