Is Coffee Good Or Bad for You?

Ah, the pleasures of drinking coffee.

Wake up in the morning and enjoy the fresh aroma of brewing coffee. Sit down at the breakfast table with a steaming cup of coffee and ruminate over the morning news. Sip your coffee slowly and enjoy its exotic aroma and its mildly biting taste.

Stop into a nearly Starbucks or your favorite coffee shop and choose among a seemingly infinite variation of coffees and coffee treats on display. Enjoy conversation with friends and colleagues over a good cup of coffee.

Take a break from work on the job or at home and enjoy a cup of hot coffee.

For many people, these are surely among the pleasures of daily living.

Caffeine in coffee is a stimulant. It causes your heart to beat a little faster. Many people can't sleep after an evening cup of coffee. Caffeine dependency and withdrawal may be problems. We've all heard that too much coffee is bad for you. But how much is too much

Every now and then there are news reports of a new study that examined the effects of coffee. It's as if these studies are looking for possible ill effects of coffee on human health. More often than not, they found no conclusive evidence of bad effects of drinking coffee in moderation.

Coffee drinkers take heart! Many of the studies actually found positive health effects of drinking coffee.

Eatingwell.com reports "recent news (in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry) that the drink contains soluble fiber, the type that can help lower cholesterol. With about 1 gram per cup, coffee’s fiber impact is modest. But the report is the latest in a growing stream of positive news about coffee."

There is more good news about coffee – It can help lower cholesterol, can lower the risk of type 2 diabetes, may lower the risk of heart disease, and has more antioxidants per serving than blueberries. It may reduce the risk of Parkinson's disease, gallstones, cirrhosis and liver cancer, and more.

Even more good news -- A study on the relationship between caffeine and cataracts presented at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology reported that caffeine may help prevent a cataract formation.

And that's not all -- BBC News reported on 17 May 2011 that in new study of 48,000 men that "Coffee has been linked to a reduced risk of dying from prostrate cancer."

A study published May 16, 2012 in the New England Journal of Medicine found that coffee drinkers are less likely than non-coffee drinkers to die from a number of health problems -- including heart disease, stroke, diabetes, accidents and infections. In that study of 400,000 adults aged 50 to 71, coffee drinkers (who drank 4 or more cups a day) had a 10% lower risk of death than the non-coffee drinkers. However, whether the lower death rate was caused by coffee drinking was not determined. Nevertheless, this is more good news for coffee drinkers.

Wikipedia describes the beneficial effects of drinking coffee as well as risks. It's under the title: Health Effects of Coffee.

Bottom line – drinking coffee in moderation isn't bad for healthy adults and may have long lasting health benefits.