A cup of good smelling coffee in the morning will give enough energy boosts till mid afternoon. Coffee has been shown in studies to provide other health benefits, like preventing diabetes and warding off certain cancers.
For some people, drinking two to four cups of coffee a day don’t have any negative effects, but heavy caffeine intake can cause insomnia, stomach upset, muscle tremors and restlessness.
Just because there are health benefits associated with drinking coffee, it doesn’t mean you should down as many cups as you can in a day. Of course, the coffee subject here is freshly brewed coffee beans, not an instant coffee packs that you bought in the sari-sari store which was already stripped of antioxidants.
For coffee brewed drinkers, here’s what you should know:
* Protects against breast cancer. Women who drink five or more cups of coffee a day are 57 percent less likely to develop estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer than women who drink less than a cup a day.
* Wards off stroke. According to a study published in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association, drinking at least one cup of coffee a day could ward off stroke. Even though the finding was in women, researchers said coffee would likely have the same effect for men, too.
* Reduces risk of diabetes. Having four cups of coffee a day can slash a woman’s risk of Type 2 diabetes by 56 percent, according to a study published in January in the journal Diabetes.
The effect likely has to do with coffee’s ability to raise levels of sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) in the blood. High blood levels of SHBG are associated with a decreased risk of Type 2 diabetes, according to the study.
* Improves brain function. Coffee can also improve brain function in mice, according to a 2010 study in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. The mice that were given coffee either had the disease progression slow, or the disease never developed at all. The finding suggests coffee could be a treatment for people with Alzheimer’s disease, those researchers said.
* Reduces prostate cancer risk. Regular coffee intake (either caffeinated or decaffeinated) is associated with a decreased risk of deadly prostate cancer.
Researchers found that men who drank the most coffee a day (six or more cups) had a nearly 20 percent lower risk of developingprostate cancer than those who drank the least coffee a day.
That association is even higher for lethal prostate cancer — the men who drank the most coffee a day had a 60 percent decreased risk of developing the disease, according to the study. And even drinking one to three cups of coffee a day was associated with a 30 percent lower risk of lethal prostate cancer , the study said.
Source: Journal News
