What Are the Health Benefits of Drinking Coffee?

Coffee Is A Powerhouse Beverage

Tea, water, natural fruit juice, and vegetable juice are beverages that are commonly considered to be among the healthiest.

What about coffee? The answer to this question may surprise many.

Those who have researched the health benefits of coffee and those who are familiar with the results of the research know the answer. Beyond that, coffee doesn’t get a lot of top votes.

Antioxidants keep our cells healthy, and coffee is packed with these. Caffeine is a stimulant that people will often frown upon, yet when consumed in moderation it can be very healthy.

Coffee is definitely a beverage to consider if you’re looking for a powerful health boost.

Know How To Make It So That You Get the Most Out of It

I cover this topic in depth in my article on the healthiest way to make coffee. Here I just want to provide a quick summary of the subject.

Keep It Simple If You Want to Keep It Healthy

The first thing is not to load coffee with a bunch of stuff that’s bad for you. Does this sound familiar? You have probably heard the same suggestion when it comes to the buffet style salad bars. Salad isn’t going to be very healthy when it’s full of other things that are loaded with fat and sodium.

Something similar applies to coffee. It’s bad enough that things such as creamer and sweeteners can add a lot of extra calories. They can also potentially interfere with the absorption of the good things that come naturally in the coffee.

Know Your Coffee and What Brings Out the Best In It

The more you know about the coffee you drink, the better the odds will be that you’re choosing healthy coffee to start out with. For example, coffees with the lightest roast levels tend to have the highest antioxidant content. Then, preparing your coffee with an Aeropress coffee maker will preserve the most antioxidants and minerals.

An Overview of Coffee’s Amazing Health Benefits

First, I want to provide the most complete quick reference I have found on the health benefits of coffee. It helps me see the majority of the main points in a simple and effective manner.

A quick glance and I can see that there are numerous physical and mental benefits. I can also see that coffee contains quite a few antioxidants, minerals, and vitamins.

The source of this infographic is a very nice article on the health benefits of coffee that I highly recommend. This article is on a website run by two people who are very committed to providing valuable information related to nutrition and disease prevention / treatment. You can see the article here: health benefits of coffee.

Wellness Benefits

They say “an apple a day keeps the doctor away, ” and it’s too bad that saying is already taken.
I think that the same could be said about coffee. Coffee helps prevent a number of diseases by helping keep our cells and organs healthy.

Coffee also provides some essential vitamins and minerals, which further contributes to good health. This ties in to what I’ll be mentioning below, because these wellness benefits are the foundations for a sound body and a sound mind.

Physical Benefits

I believe these are best illustrated by some real world examples. I have seen for myself the good that coffee can do, so I’m a big believer in the benefits of drinking coffee. I have had the experience of seeing some pretty significant improvements physically since I started drinking coffee.

As someone who used to drag around always seemingly “one speed too slow,” I can say that (caffeinated) coffee energizes me like nothing else. The quality of my life has definitely improved since I started drinking coffee.

Since my college days, I remember being able to start my days fast not much after jumping out of bed and drinking a cup of coffee. In contrast, in high school (when I was not yet drinking coffee) getting going in the morning was a very slow process.

Since I started working after college, coffee gets me through an entire day of work very efficiently. I even have plenty of pep left over for my workouts at the gym.

These sorts of things are among the most documented and fairly well-known benefits of drinking coffee. There are many examples similar to mine.

Mental Benefits

I can’t really say which comes first, the chicken or the egg. I’m referring to what I mentioned above about feeling slow before I started drinking coffee. Was my body slow getting going because my mind wasn’t alert?

Either way, I know that the mentally I have noticed improvements too. Looking as far back as my college years, I can recall how much more mental stamina I had when I drank coffee.

My job is pretty demanding mentally, and I need to work diligently to keep up with the fast pace that’s required. That can be challenging on its own, but even more so with many distractions in the background. Coffee helps me stay mentally sharp and focused throughout the entire day.

Liquor is sometimes referred to as “spirits.” Those are mostly bad spirits, in my opinion. Coffee, on the other hand, puts me in good spirits. Coffee not only helps cognitively, it also provides a boost emotionally.

These types of mental benefits and the physical ones mentioned above are the ones that get most attention. There are some additional ones that are less publicized, and I’ll be mentioning some of these below.

Some Health Benefits of Drinking coffee That May Surprise You

Coffee is usually not the first thing that comes to mind for most people in the situations mentioned below. Coffee might seem not particularly useful or even to go against popular belief in these particular situations. It may surprise quite a few people that these benefits are as real as the more well-known ones mentioned above.

Drinking Coffee Can Be More Effective Than Dieting

One of the major drawbacks of dieting is that can slow down metabolism, if not done properly. People can also feel like they are “forcing themselves to starve.”

Caffeine boosts metabolism and helps suppress hunger naturally. If combined with even moderate levels of activity, it can be particularly effective in helping people lose weight.

Drinking Coffee Early In the Day Can Help You Sleep Better

One of the potential consequences of over indulging in caffeine is insomnia. Yet when used in moderation and sufficiently early in the day, caffeine can contribute to sleeping better. Since caffeine is a stimulant, drinking (caffeinated) coffee can to a higher level of activity.

A higher level of activity throughout the day means that you will be less likely to toss and turn in bed. Consequently, you are likely to fall asleep faster and to achieve a more adequate and restful sleep.

Coffee Can Improve Sexual Wellness

As mentioned above, coffee can help improve a person’s mood. This can be beneficial in a number of ways, including contributing to sexual wellness.

In both men and women, studies have shown that the stimulant properties of caffeine can lead to increased arousal. In men, caffeine can boost testosterone and improve blood flow. This translates to a lower likelihood of erectile dysfunction.

How to Avoid the Potential Downsides of Coffee

To get the maximum health benefits from drinking coffee, caffeine consumption needs to be monitored and kept below the recommended daily limits. Don’t forget to count all caffeine consumption throughout the day. There are many other things besides coffee can contain caffeine.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has a page on their website with various caffeine content charts.  You can visit that page by clicking here: CSPI caffeine content charts.  Below is an example of the caffeine content of some common desserts.

 

Learn What Works Best for You

While according to the FDA most of us can safely drink 400 milligrams of coffee, that doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily a good idea to consume that much caffeine.

Your body will let you know better than anything else what is right for you. If any of the signs of caffeine over-consumption are present, that’s a good indication to cut back on caffeine.

 

Focus on the Major Benefits of Coffee

While the benefits of caffeine (when used in moderation) are great, to me they shouldn’t be the main concern. Coffee’s major benefits, in my opinion, are the antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals.

I prefer to drink several cups of coffee with moderate caffeine content to one cup of coffee that’s very high in caffeine. That way, I know that I’m getting plenty of the best that coffee has to offer.