Top 10 health benefits of coffee | coffee health benefits

The top benefit of coffee for me has to be it's ability to get you started in the morning. If you have ever gone off coffee for a few weeks and you take your first cup of coffee you notice that buzz within minutes. When we are accustomed to coffee we don't notice this effect as much, but it is still there.

In fact, at Coffee Sensei we talk about all sorts of the affects of coffee on your health and this is just one of them. In fact, coffee is such a powerful stimulant that having more than 3 cups of coffee before an Olympic sporting event can have you banned!

The second benefit of coffee is that it helps you lose and maintain your ideal weight. Coffee has been shown to raise the metabolism a few points and even though that might not sound like much it is enough to help you lose an extra 50 to 100 calories per day.

The third best health benefit of coffee is that coffee has no calories. In fact the answer to the question, "Does black coffee have calories?" is a resounding no. And not only that, but coffee is a tasty and calorie free beverage. Not many other beverages can boast of that fact other than tea perhaps.

A fourth benefit of drinking coffee is that it has been shown to help reduce symptoms of gout. There was a pretty robust study involving over 40,000 men over a period of 12 years and it reduced the incidence of gout. The more coffee they drank the more their gout was diminished. There are probably other ways to reduce gout, but gout is a very painful and in some cases debilitating disease. So bottoms up to coffee.

Most of the benefits alluded to with coffee are mostly appropriated to the calorie free and unadulterated black coffee. So bear that in mind. The more junk you put into coffee i.e. the more sugar and the more cream the more you belittle coffee's healthful benefits. The ideal way to drink coffee is black and you will get used to it if you give a try.

My fifth favorite health benefit of coffee is that it reduces the chance and incidence of Alzheimer's disease. Those of you with grandparents who suffer from this horrible condition know just how horrible and painful it can be to watch someone suffering from this handicap. Along with reducing Alzheimer's coffee also seems to reduce overall dementia too. Studies have found that the best benefits are from drinking 3 to 6 cups per day.

Number 6 on the road to coffees top 10 health benefits is a reduced risk of Parkinson's disease. We have all become familiar with this disease thanks to Michael J. Fox's courageous battle with it. Benefits seem most profound when drinking 3 to 6 cups of coffee per day.

For more on the health benefits of coffee you can check out Wikipedia over here.

The seventh reason to love your habit of drinking coffee and the health benefits that it provides is because it improve your mental or cognitive abilities. We had touched on this before when we spoke of coffee helping give you that buzz, but coffee also actually improves your mental ability according to tests that have studied this effect of coffee. So before your next big exam, enjoy a cup of delicious hot coffee!

If you suffer from migraines or even other types of headaches and muscle pain and you just can't seem to find anything that works, you might try drinking a cup of coffee immediately after taking a Tylenol. Caffeine it seems helps enhance the effects of some analgesics. You've likely seen this in Tylenol 3s which have caffeine as an ingredient for this very reason.

Some studies have shown that alcoholics who are also coffee drinkers tend to have less cirrhosis of the liver. In fact, coffee helps mitigates the effects of alcohol and other traumas on the liver resulting in less cirrhosis.

Lastly, coffee also helps protect against dental caries. It seems that the effects of tannins in coffee help destroy the bacteria that contribute greatly to plaque and hence tooth cavities. This is also why tea has the same effect of protecting tooth enamel. However, as with most of the benefits of coffee and especially with this one, the effect diminishes as you add more cream and sugar to your coffee. So drink it black for health teeth and gums.

Remember in the beginning we talked about how too much of a good thing is a bad thing? Well this is true for coffee as well. So let's take a look at the 2 most prevalent risks from drinking too much coffee.

Anxiety and loss of sleep top the list of risks to be aware of from drinking coffee. In fact, so me people can't drink coffee at all because it affects them so much. Even those of us who love our coffee know that we have to limit the amount of coffee that we drink after 12pm if we want to have a restful night sleep.

The other risky affect of coffee is that it can increase your blood pressure especially if you drink coffee without using any paper filters in the processing. So keep this in mind. Not usually a problem for those of us with normal blood pressure but if you are on blood pressure meds or you drink too much coffee you need to be aware of this coffee risk.