You’ve heard it all before. Yes, the slew of nasty comments from those caffeinated-beverage-naysayers. Coffee will give you bad breath! Coffee will stain your teeth! Coffee will give you adrenal fatigue! Coffee will keep you up all night! Pish, posh. Coffee will give us more time to do important tasks that we likely procrastinated during the daytime. Things like clean our houses, do our laundry, do our taxes, or just peruse Pinterest for hours on end. What if we were to say, “Coffee will improve your overall health!”? That got your attention, didn’t it? Perhaps even the attention of non-coffee drinkers alike.
Humor aside, coffee has some serious benefits. The coffee drinker can reap advantages such as: potential diabetes prevention, liver preservation (especially for the alcohol drinker), improved energy levels and brain function, cardiovascular protection, and more! Without further ado, here are some super amazing benefits of drinking coffee, that make us feel a little less guilty for our supercharged habit.
1. Coffee can increase your energy levels and help your brain function better.
Caffeine, the stimulating substance found in coffee, actually makes people feel less tired. Once caffeine is absorbed through the body and bloodstream, it reaches the brain. Without getting too scientific, the caffeine basically enhances the blasting-off of neurons in your brain. Studies have also shown that coffee drinkers experience an overall better cognitive functioning, including memory, mood, and reaction times.
2. Coffee drinkers are more protected against type 2 diabetes.
Solid evidence suggests that people who drink coffee are at a lower risk of developing the diabetes illness. The evidence is strong indeed with studies showing that the people who drink six or more cups of coffee per day have a 35% lower chance of having type 2 diabetes. Furthermore, coffee drinkers who drank less than the recommended six cups, saw a noticeable drop in that protection. So the more you drink, the more you can benefit from the perks!
3. Coffee is like a bodyguard for your liver.
As if tasting delicious wasn’t enough, you can also rely on coffee to offer safety to your liver. Coffee has a protective effect on the liver and can block cirrhosis caused by alcohol consumption, just by drinking merely one cup. For the non-alcohol drinker, four daily cups of Joe is a great preventative way to keep your liver healthy, since it safeguards against Non Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) as well. Either way, coffee seems to be a real liver lover.
4. Coffee is like kryptonite to cardiovascular related death.
The way that coffee shields the human body from cardiovascular related problems is significant. So much so that by drinking only one to two cups of coffee per day, the cardiovascular system is defended by a whopping 38%! This daily coffee habit can reduce the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease by this notable percentage.
5. Coffee can help you shed excess weight.
Since coffee contains caffeine, and caffeine is included in the ingredients list of every commercial fat burning supplement, it must help to make you trim right; but why and how? Caffeine is actually one of the only fat burning substances that come from nature. Coffee burns fat in your body by increasing your metabolic rate. In fact, coffee ups your body’s ability to burn fat by about 10% in obese people and it intensifies the body’s fat burning system by 29% in people who are lean. Coffee sure does a lot of wonderful stuff for your bod!
6. Coffee keeps your ticker regular and steady.
Besides keeping heart disease, heart attacks, and strokes at bay, coffee has also been known to keep your heart pumping regularly. Plus, by keeping your heartbeat constant, you are at less of a risk of possessing a heart irregularity or arrhythmia. It just takes one to three cups of coffee per day to reduce your risk of stroke or death relating to heart-failure, by a decent 20%! With these fabulous health benefits, coffee has certainly stolen our hearts!
Is there anything that coffee can’t do?
Catherine Gill is a writer, blogger, and holistic vegan chef who specializes in natural and health foods. She studied and found her passion in writing, literature, and social science in college. She runs the popular blog The Dirty Vegan since 2010, focusing on comfort-food-style vegan recipes that are fun, accessible, and healthy. She also ran Dirty Vegan Foods, a vegan bakery specializing in veganized versions of classic desserts. She has an active social media presence with over 28K followers on twitter (@TheDirtyVegan). She currently resides in New England with her husband, daughter, and rescue dog. She is the author of The Dirty Vegan Cookbook.
