It seems that one of the most common addictions in our society today is the addiction to coffee. Many people, myself included, cannot get a proper start to the morning without a cup of coffee. Part of it has to do with the caffeine and part of it has to do with routine. In either case, coffee has very much become a part of our lives. Is this a bad thing? While it may not be healthy to need five or six cups of java over the course of a single day, a mild addiction to coffee might actually be healthy!
This appears to be a similar phenomenon to what we find with red wine. Moderate consumption of red wine comes with all sorts of wonderful health benefits, but drinking too much can be harmful. The same, from what I can tell, can be said about our consumption of coffee and caffeine. Let me count the ways.
Coffee Fights Dementia
Earlier this morning, I received a tweet from @panamajack pointing me toward an interesting article on Canada.com. As it turns out, coffee fights dementia. The scientists haven’t gotten as far as human trials just yet, but they did run an experiment using mice that were predisposed to dementia symptoms. You could say that they were Alzheimer’s mice. Researchers used tests to confirm that the mice involved were exhibiting signs of memory impairment.
Half of the mice in the trial were given plain water. The other half were dosed with caffeine as part of their drinking water. After two months of this arrangement, the caffeine-dosed mice “performed much better on tests measuring memory and thinking skills, performing as well as mice of the same age without dementia.” Does this mean that caffeine can improve memory and reverse the effects of dementia in people? Maybe.
Coffee Really Does Hydrate
It is commonly accepted that we should drink more water each day, but many people also believe that caffeinated beverages don’t count toward that “eight glasses a day” for water consumption. Well, that’s wrong. A recent study “found no significant differences” in hydration when comparing plain water with any combination of caffeinated beverages, including coffee. We retain at least half of the fluid in the coffee, which isn’t all that shabby. If you’re thirsty, coffee can hit the spot.
Coffee Cures Headaches
There are many things that can cause a headache and one of these happens to be caffeine withdrawal. I realize that this becomes a bit of a chicken-and-egg phenomenon, but if you are already addicted to caffeine, one of the easiest ways to overcome your headache is to drink a cup of coffee. As mentioned above, the cup of coffee can also hydrate you; dehydration is one of the more common causes of headaches as well.
Coffee Improves Life-Work Balance
Since I work from home as a freelance writer, I don’t get much in terms of “real” human interaction over the course of a regular work day. Staring at the same monitor and the same four walls can drive me absolutely batty, so I oftentimes look for excuses to go outside. Simply getting outside of the house can work wonders for my sanity and one of my more common destinations is the local coffee house. This achieves two fundamental goals.
First, I am out of the house and that helps with finding some semblance of sanity. Second, I can once again feel like I am a part of society, interacting with a real person (the barista), albeit briefly. With these two elements in place, my overall sense of work-life balance is vastly improved.
Coffee Isn’t All That Bad
Whether you must have some fancy steamed beverage at Starbucks or you are perfectly satisfied with fast food coffee, that invaluable cup of caffeine certainly has its benefits. I’d be wary of over-indulging or over-spending, of course, which is partly why I choose to brew most of my own coffee at home.
What about you? What’s your perspective on our communal coffee addiction?
There’s growing evidence that caffeine has a lot of negative affects, one of which is increasing the circulating levels of insulin in the body, which makes it hard to lose weight and also can lead to premature hardening of the arteries. That being said, those affects don’t seem to happen with caffeinated coffee, so it’s theorized that there’s some other element to coffee that is protective.
Let me add that coffee as Duane states increases the insulin levels which is bad for type 2 diabetics, which I am one of the many millions.
The caffine in coffee does not give you the high, it’s a sugar rush!
Coffee is just as bad and addicting as cigarettes, and any other drug. But, if done in reasonable moderation is not life threatening and I even have a cup or two a week.
Yeah but it does keep you awake right?
A pharmacist friend of mine once wisely told me to NEVER take any nutrition based studies too seriously, particularly of the “Consuming A” equals “Benefit B” variety. Our physiology is just too complicated to make blanket statements like “coffee is good/coffee is bad”. We all have to listen up to what our bodies are telling us.
Michael Pollen’s essay in the NYT, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants”, is always worth a read when facing the logic of ‘nutritionism’:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html
That said, I LOVE coffee, and welcome any intellectual placebo that reinforces my love.
I used to drink coffee once, maybe twice, a year. But that restaurant closed a couple years ago and I haven’t had a full cup of coffee since.
I drink tea on pretty much a daily basis though.
I tend to greet most nutrition information with a certain amount of skepticism. I know I love my one cup of coffee in the morning, but then, my husband roasts his own beans and we get really, really good coffee. It’s a taste issue.
That being said, one can always order soda or tea at a coffee house and still get out. Or just go to the local library.
What works for one person may not yield similar effect for another.
As with all things, moderation is always the key.
Just remember everything in moderation.
And coffee brings you lots of friends to chill out with!
COFFEE FTW. That’s all I wanted to say 🙂