Coffee is one of the most used beverages worldwide. Its use is due to reasons ranging from social to pharmacological. Its average is equivalent to the average coffee consumption in the US is 5.1 kg/year per person, similar to the average in Europe.

The question about whether drinking coffee is good or bad is quite common since some studies in the 1990s found that drinking coffee could be associated with some deleterious effects on health, however, we will analyze the latest results of scientific studies and We will draw a conclusion.

¿What does coffee bring?

Coffee is a complex mixture of molecules, mainly caffeine. Additional components are important, like a serious amount of phenolic elements, lipids, nitrogen compounds, vitamins, minerals, alkaloids. Many of these components, in isolation, have been related to inflammation, disease prevention, as well as cancer decline. But will it be that coming mixed in coffee can have beneficial effects?

The effects of coffee on health

The latest studies that analyze a large number of people who drink coffee for many years and comparing them with other people who do not consume it, have a clearly beneficial effect and with minimal and minor adverse reactions, except in pregnancy. The main benefits are:

• 17% reduction in any cause of death
• 19% reduction in death from heart disease
• 18% reduction in cancer onset, especially of colon, prostate and oral cavity
• Improves lung function in people with asthma

¿What adverse effects has coffee shown?

So far they are mild and of low severity, such as headache in some people, nausea or sleep disturbance, other negative reports have been related to gastrointestinal sympthoms. On the other hand, studies of the 90s that alarmed the world when reporting lung cancer and other coffee adverse effects were biased as many of the patients who entered the study, they used to smoking, which does not allow us to get a valid association between coffee and lung cancer. Other studies have shown that some women may have a greater number of fractures when consuming coffee, however, this result is not so blunt and is still in doubt.

¿How much coffee can I drink per day?

Studies that have seen the greatest benefit of coffee consumption over health have estimated consumption of 4 to 5 cups of coffee per day. Therefore we can suggest that this is the number of cups per day.

¿When should I do not consume coffee?

In pregnant women, it has been found that coffee consumption has been linked to low birth weight of their children, so it is not recommended. On the other hand, people who feel nauseous, headache, we suggest you try different brands of coffee and consume only a couple of cups per day. For those who generate insomnia, try not to take express and not consume it beyond 2 at 4 pm of the day.

Bibliography

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• Jae-Hoon Bae. Coffee and health. Integr Med Res (2014) 189–191
• Poole R. Coffee consumption and health: umbrella review of meta-analyses of multiple health outcomes. BMJ. 2017 Nov 22;359:j5024.
• Welsh EJ, Bara A, Barley E, Cates CJ. Caffeine for asthma. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2010, Issue 1. Art. No.: CD001112. 
• Wang, A., Wang, S., Zhu, C. et al. Coffee and cancer risk: A meta-analysis of prospective observational studies. Sci Rep 6, 33711 (2016)
• Systematic review of the potential adverse effects of caffeine consumption in healthy adults, pregnant women, adolescents, and children. Food and Chemical Toxicology. Volume 109, Part 1, November 2017, Pages 585-648