Like with most such questions, there is no simple answer. Yes, coffee does negatively impact your health! No, coffee doesn’t negatively impact your health! It all depends on what study you read on what expert you ask. Being a caffeine addict, I’m not in a position to form unbiased opinions, so I’m simply going to report the information that I have gleaned from the reports and studies that I have read that were prepared by the “experts” in the field of nutritional medicine. Using the data I’m going to report here, you can form your own conclusions.
In nature, caffeine, which is found in a wide variety of plants, is a natural pesticide that shields them from attacks by plant devouring insects. In the human body, it’s a psychoactive stimulant, arousing the CNS (Central Nervous System). In the human body it also behaves like a mild diuretic, causing an increase in urine production. I can personally attest to that fact.
According to one study that I read recently, caffeine appears to exacerbate PMS in 40 percent of the women of child bearing age who drink tea and/or coffee. Their manifested symptoms of anxiety, depression, fatigue, breast swelling and tenderness, headaches, weight gain, abdominal cramps, etc all seem to decrease with a decrease in caffeine consumption. For women of childbearing age, that’s a negative health impact.
According to the CDC (Center for Disease Control), 10 million women undergoing treatment for infertility are told to give up caffeine containing drinks like coffee, tea and other caffeine rich drinks because it negatively impacts their treatment. Caffeine has also been linked to pregnant women giving birth to underweight babies and the consumption of caffeine has been directly linked to heart palpitations in pregnant women.
Caffeine, like many drugs ingested by pregnant women, finds its way across the placenta barrier and into the blood stream of the unborn child. Babies of heavy coffee and tea drinkers exhibit the symptoms of caffeine withdrawal after birth. Caffeine also becomes part of breast milk and can negatively impact the health breast fed babies.
Caffeine can also negatively impact the health and comfort of women past the child bearing age. Caffeine can exacerbate all the physical manifestations of menopause, not to mention the fact that caffeine seems to hasten the aging process and the onset of menopause. Caffeine blocks the absorption of calcium, magnesium, potassium and vitamin D which hastens the onset of osteoporosis in menopausal women.
The ingestion of caffeine also seems to be directly linked to high blood pressure, high cholesterol and high homocysteine levels which lead to heart disease. But caffeine has some good points as well; I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether the pros outweigh the cons.
According to a research study reported in “Neurology,” the journal of the AAN (American Academy of Neurology), the study of 4,197 women, 65 years of age and older, caffeine helped them maintain their mental agility and helped them remain dementia free. The cognitive decline of the coffee drinking women as opposed to the non-caffeine ingesting control group was 70 percent less.
Studies conducted at the Harvard School of Medicine showed that regular coffee drinkers have a 30 percent less chance of falling victim to diabetes. Other studies conducted at the Harvard Medical School concluded that people who regularly ingest caffeine suffered fewer cases of colon cancer, cirrhosis of the liver and gallstone attacks. There also seems to be a connection between caffeine and the later onset of Parkinson’s disease. Caffeine appears to lessen asthma attacks; helps relieve headaches as well as elevate the mood of the coffee drinker. The one positive effect that really surprised me was that it seems to inhibit the development of cavities.
Well, ladies, you be the judge and jury, is coffee a threat to your health?
