How much coffee do you drink every day? Right now, coffee is the third most consumed beverage in the world, behind tea and water. Billions of cups of coffee are consumed every year, and as people start looking at ways to be healthier, you might have found yourself feeling guilty over your coffee habit. Is coffee even good for you?
Yes, it is. But it’s not all good. Coffee is a known anxiolytic, it boosts the effects of stress on your body, and it can cause insomnia, among other problems. To make matters worse, caffeine is addictive. Over time, mantling a caffeine habit makes it so that you need to drink coffee every day or deal with withdrawal effects. If you never tried to quit coffee before, you should know that the withdrawal effects can last as much as ten days, and they can start as soon as 12 hours after you stop consuming caffeine.
If you deal with severe stress, anxiety, or insomnia, you should seriously consider cutting caffeine out of your diet. However, if none of those are a problem for you, there are good reasons to keep drinking coffee throughout your life. Here are some of the health benefits of coffee.
1 – Coffee enhances your mind
The alertness brought to you by caffeine does more than drive your sleep always. It also enhances several aspects of your cognitive ability. Including your memory — both short-term and long-term — your reaction time and your attention span. There’s also been speculation that those benefits of coffee reduce the risk of workplace accidents on those who consume it, although scientific evidence for that claim is scarce.
2 – Coffee gives you more energy
Of course, the number one selling point of coffee is its ability to help you stay awake and alert over long periods. Which a real benefit, although it might not work the way you think it does. Caffeine blocks the adenosine receptors in your brain. Adenosine is responsible for making you feel tired and sleepy, so rather than waking you up, coffee just prevents you from feeling drowsy in the first place.
As a result, to get the most out of coffee, you should take it preventively; in anticipation of feeling tired. The energy benefits are reduced if you’re already exhausted by the time you drink it.
3 – Coffee helps you lose weight
Caffeine can boost your metabolic function by upwards of 10%, helping you burn more fat throughout your day. For that reason, caffeine is found in almost every commercial fat-burning supplement, and it’s one of the few natural substances that have been shown to have a direct effect on weight loss.
There is a catch, however. Studies have shown that people who consume caffeine over long periods see this effect diminished as their body becomes acclimated to the stimulant.
4 – Coffee boosts physical performance
You should consider having a nice cup of coffee about half an hour before you head to the gym. Caffeine was shown to increase physical performance by around 12%. It boosts your energy levels by increasing the levels of adrenaline in your bloodstream, among other fight-or-flight hormones.
If all these benefits still don’t sound like enough to compensate for the adverse effects of coffee, try taking steps to mitigate caffeine’s side effects. For example, you can reduce the stress-boosting effects of caffeine by combining it with naturally calming substances, such as the ones found at Cibdol.com.