Is Coffee Healthy?

In an article posted on the Harvard School of Public Health website, Dr. Rob van Dam, Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutrition, writes that the research emerging over the past few years suggests that coffee drinking for the general population does not have any serious detrimental health effects. However, there are some people with certain health concerns who may want to avoid coffee or restrict their consumption.

Research

Two Harvard studies, the Nurses' Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, which together included about 130,000 volunteers who were followed for 18 to 24 years, are cited by Dr. van Dam as not finding a relationship between coffee consumption and increased risk of death. Even people in this research who drank up to 6 cups of coffee per day were at no higher risk of death. As Dr. van Dam points out, coffee is a complex beverage to study as drinking coffee often goes along with a lifestyle that is not very health conscious. People who drink lots of coffee may be cigarette smokers, tend to exercise less and eat a less healthful diet. In the more recent studies that have been better conducted, these lifestyle factors have been taken into consideration.

Benefits

In their New York Times bestselling book, You: The Owner's Manual, Dr. Michael Roizen and Dr. Mehmet Oz comment that there have been enough studies performed that they can say that drinking 24 oz. of coffee a day decreases your risk of Parkinson's disease by about 40 percent and your risk of Alzheimer's by about 20 percent. Drs. Roizen and Oz explain that the reasons are not clearly known but it appears that caffeine has a beneficial impact on neurotransmitters that are the chemical messengers in the brain. Dr. van Dam goes on to say that the latest research suggests that coffee consumption may also protect against type 2 diabetes, liver cancer and liver cirrhosis. He concludes with the reminder that, even though coffee may have potential health benefits, more research still needs to be done.

Potential Dangers

Included among the people who may want to avoid coffee are those who are having a hard time controlling their blood pressure or women who are pregnant. For pregnant women, there has been controversy over the high intake of coffee or caffeine and a possible increase in the risk of miscarriage. As Dr. Rob van Dam points out, since caffeine goes through the placenta and reaches the sensitive fetus, it seems prudent for pregnant women to reduce coffee consumption to a low level of possibly 1 cup a day. And, for people who have a hard time controlling their hypertension, switching to decaffeinated coffee may have a beneficial effect. Drs. Roizen and Oz warn that, for some people, too much caffeine can cause irregular heartbeats, difficulty with diabetes, stomach upset, anxiety or migranes.

Quantity

As Dr. Donald Hensrud of Mayo Clinic points out on their website, the old maxim of "everything in moderation" should still be regarded as a good practice when considering the amount of coffee to safely consume. Although coffee may not be harmful in reasonable doses, the accompaniments such as cream and sugar add fat and calories to your diet. Dr. van Dam, of Harvard School of Public Health, explains that the typical research is based on black coffee and that a high-calorie coffeehouse beverage with whipped cream may have almost 500 calories, which could lead to weight gain over time. Dr. Hensrud adds that heavy caffeine use, such as 4 to 7 cups of coffee a day, can cause problems such as restlessness, anxiety, irritability and sleeplessness, particularly in susceptible individuals.

Paper-Filtered Coffee

Coffee contains a substance called cafestol that, as described by Dr. Rob van Dam at the Harvard School of Public Health, is a potent stimulator of LDL cholesterol levels. When coffee is brewed with a paper filter, the oily substance containing the cafestol is left behind in the filter. For people who want to protect themselves from high cholesterol levels, paper-filtered coffee is possibly a better choice than French press or boiled coffee. It appears that espresso is somewhere in the middle as it has less cafestol than boiled or French press coffee, but more than paper-filtered coffee.