The most popular herb in the country used by well over half of adult is not recognized for what it is. You may not realize that coffee is an herb. One of my favorite.
In the early hours of the morning, few things awake the senses like a strong cup of coffee. Whenever I have the chance to go to Jamaica, I bring back my favorite: Blue Mountain.
Like other herbs, coffee has both benefits and drawbacks. In today’s Health Alert, I’ll show you how to get the advantages coffee with awareness of the potential pitfalls.
More Antioxidants than Vegetables?
A few months ago, a new study revealed a startling fact: Americans are getting more antioxidants from coffee than fruits and vegetables.[1] (This obviously says something about the amount and quality of our fruit and vegetable intake. See your previous Health Alert for action to take for that problem.)
Just a cup and a half of coffee will get you more than twelve-hundred milligrams of total antioxidants. Second on the list was tea, with bananas finishing a distant third at a mere seventy-six milligrams.
Coffee has other benefits too:
- Cuts Your Risk of Liver Cancer in Half: Doctors in Japan found that people who drink two cups of coffee every day had half the liver cancer risk than those who never drank it. Your risk drops even lower when you drink three or four cups a day.1
- Reduces Your Risk of Diabetes: Doctors at Harvard discovered that men who drank six cups of coffee a day lowered their risk of type two diabetes by more than half. Women reduced their risk by almost thirty percent.1
- Lowers Your Risk of Colon Cancer: Coffee protects you from colon cancer. A recent study shows that colorectal cancer was twenty-four percent lower among those who drink four cups of coffee a day than those who don’t drink coffee.[2]
Caveats Served with Your Morning Coffee
As an herb, coffee changes your physiology. The more you drink, the more your body responds by lowering your sensitivity to it. Coffee stimulates your nervous system but your body will “down-regulate” in order to stay balanced. This means you need that cup of coffee in the morning to get you to the same place you would have been had you not had any coffee at all. If you try to keep that buzz going, you can develop a caffeine dependency.
Patients have come to me complaining “Doctor I have headaches and my nerves are on edge. I’m nervous, I’m irritable and I can’t sleep and I don’t know why?” After talking to them I learn that they drink fifteen cups of coffee a day.
As with drugs, dosage is important in using any herb. Overdoing herbs will cause problems, whether it’s coffee, ginseng or gingko biloba. This is the principle difference between herbs and nutrients.
Know your limits. Use coffee as a temporary pick me up but not a constant source of energy. For most people one or two cups in the morning appear to be harmless and may convey health benefits.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD
P.S. – When possible, drink organic coffee. Commercial growers spray their coffees with pesticides. No one really knows what the long-term effects might be.
[1] Associated Press. Study touts coffee’s health benefits. USA Today. Aug 28, 2005.
[2] European Journal of Cancer Prevention, 2002; 11: 137-145. “Coffee and tea consumption and cancers of the bladder, colon and rectum”