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COFFEE’S RISKS AND REWARDS, IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK
Coffee is the second most popular drink in
the world, trailing only water and, debatably, tea.
Coffee is among the most consumed — and controversial — beverages in the
world, and certainly many of us use it for a nice little boost for working out.
While coffee should be treated with care and avoided altogether by those who
metabolize it poorly, it also provides health benefits to many people,
especially bodybuilders.
Read on to find out what they are – and how to drink coffee responsibly.
Caffeine, a key component of coffee, is a
controversial compound.
With 90% of North American adults consuming caffeine daily, it is the
world’s most consumed psychoactive drug – and coffee is the delivery method of
choice.
Coffee’s origins
The coffee plant originated in East Africa — according to legend, a goat
herder tried coffee cherries after he noticed his goats acting much more
energetic after nibbling on the coffee bushes.
The earliest evidence of coffee drinking occurred in the 15th century
in Yemen. From Yemen, coffee quickly spread to Egypt and North Africa, and by
the 16th century it was being enjoyed by the rest of the Middle
East, Persia, and Turkey and soon thereafter Italy and the rest of Europe.
Fast forward to today. Coffee is ubiquitous in our culture. Everywhere you
look, there’s a coffee shop on the corner. What effect might our cultural love
of coffee have on our health?
Short answer: Well, we’re not completely sure.
Coffee’s risks
Research on coffee’s safety is mixed, for several reasons:
- Metabolism
matters. People vary genetically in how well they can process caffeine and
coffee.
- Coffee
interacts with many hormones and neurotransmitters in the body, such as cortisol,
acetylcholine, and insulin. These relationships are complex, and often
depend on timing, amount, and people’s individual makeup.
- As a crop,
coffee is less like corn or soy, and more like cacao or wine grapes: It’s
typically grown and processed in smaller batches by smaller-scale farmers
and producers. Variations in soil and climate, as well as later roasting
and brewing technique, will change the taste and chemical makeup. It’s
hard to standardize the exact chemical compounds in coffee from batch to
batch.
So it’s hard to say definitively that coffee is “good” or “bad”; “healthy”
or “unhealthy”. Let’s explore this in more depth.
What about my metabolism?
One reason that evidence on the health effects of coffee is so mixed is that
people clear caffeine at different rates. Caffeine is broken down and cleared
by the liver, and our genetic makeup shapes how
quickly and effectively we can do this.
- On one
hand, “slow” metabolizers of caffeine don’t process
caffeine effectively. These are people who are adversely affected by
caffeine, get the jitters, and are wired for up to nine hours after
consumption.
- Others just
get a boost in energy and alertness for a couple of hours; they are
considered “fast” metabolizers of caffeine.
Research in the emerging field of nutrigenomics shows that about half of us
have the gene variant that makes us “slow” metabolizers, while the other half
enjoy the gene variant that allows them to get away with quad-espressos.
Thus, whether coffee is better or worse for you depends on how well and
quickly you metabolize caffeine.
If you are a slow metabolizer of caffeine and coffee, steer clear (or at
least, reduce your consumption). In your case, coffee can do more harm than
good, and this may explain why high coffee consumption has been associated
with:
- higher risk
of miscarriage
- disrupted
sleep
- worse PMS symptoms
- increased
blood pressure, even in people without hypertension
- non-fatal
myocardial infarction (aka a heart
attack)
On the plus side, low caffeine consumption still seems relatively safe for
most folks, so a few daily cups of tea or squares of dark chocolate shouldn’t
harm you (and in fact, may greatly boost your wellbeing!).
And fortunately, not everyone is adversely affected. For those lucky enough
to be fast metabolizers, there is good news – and lots of it. Fast metabolizers
don’t show the same association between coffee and disease — if you’re a fast
metabolizer, coffee might even improve your
health!
If you’d like to know more about how well you metabolize caffeine, you can
take a quick and easy genetic test through agencies such as 23andme.com or
existencegenetics.com
What about cortisol?
Cortisol is a hormone produced by the adrenal glands. It increases blood pressure, spikes blood sugar and prepares the body for
“fight or flight” mode.
Coffee and caffeine tend to transiently increase cortisol levels; however,
this depends on several factors, including when you drink coffee, how often you
drink it, and whether you have high blood pressure.
Cortisol is normally high in the morning, so if you drink some coffee at 6
a.m. and 10 a.m., you should be fine, as cortisol is naturally elevated at that
time of day anyway. However, your body may not appreciate coffee as much in the
afternoon or evening, when cortisol normally drops. At that point, consider tea
or something decaffeinated.
Again, there’s individual variation: Habitual consumers of coffee seem to be
less affected by the cortisol bump, while those with hypertension seem to be
more affected.
If cortisol levels are a problem for you, keep your coffee intake to first
thing in the morning, and otherwise consume more tea. (Not only does tea have
less caffeine, it also has other beneficial, calming compounds such as
L-theanine.)
What about pesticides?
Coffee plants are heavily sprayed with pesticides, which pose obvious health
concerns.
Fortunately, the plant’s structure offers some protection. While the outer
“berry” does receive a lot of exposure, it’s the interior bean that is roasted
and used for coffee, and its exposure is far less. In addition, the roasting
process destroys the majority of pesticide residues.
If you’re especially wary of pesticides, choose organically grown coffee.
(Hey, it can’t hurt.) And while you’re at it, look for the Fair Trade label,
which helps insure that family farmers are paid a fair wage for their crops.
What about my insulin sensitivity?
While a high dose of caffeine tends to decrease insulin sensitivity and
glucose tolerance acutely, it doesn’t seem to cause chronic problems. While
those at risk of developing diabetes may want to be cautious, overall
coffee consumption is actually associated with a 35% decreased risk of
developing type II diabetes.
What about my kids?
There’s no clear guideline on when kids can safely consume coffee.
Guidelines on caffeine consumption are based mostly on the size of the child,
rather than their chronological ages.
Nevertheless, Health Canada recommends:
- no more than
45 milligrams a day for kids aged 4 to 6;
- 62.5
milligrams for kids age 7 to 9;
- 85 milligrams
for kids age 10 to 12; and
- no more than
2.5 milligrams per kilogram (2.2 pounds) of body weight for adolescents 13
and up.
All this means that a 110-pound adolescent should not have more than 125
milligrams of caffeine a day — about one 6-8 oz cup of coffee.
Coffee’s benefits
Caffeine & dehydration
For years, fitness enthusiasts worried that coffee would dehydrate them.
However, a recent review of 10 studies found that consuming up to 550 mg of
caffeine per day (or about five 8-oz cups) does not cause fluid-electrolyte
imbalances in athletes or fitness enthusiasts.
In another review, researchers concluded that consuming caffeine-containing
beverages as part of a normal lifestyle does not lead to fluid losses exceeding
the volume of fluid consumed (intake and output were roughly equal), nor is it
associated with poor hydration status.
Take-home: Don’t drink coffee as your only beverage, and drink
enough water, and you’ll be fine.
Coffee & performance
Let’s be honest — that first morning coffee can transform us from beast to
philosopher (or at least, slightly more awake and nicer beast). Coffee, and
more specifically its caffeine content, provide many noted mental and physical
performance benefits.
Caffeine reduces our rate of perceived exertion, so it doesn’t feel like we’re
working as hard as we actually are. People who regularly drink coffee perform
better on tests of reaction time, verbal memory, and visuo-spatial reasoning.
Another study found that women over the age of 80 performed significantly
better on tests of cognitive function if they had regularly
consumed coffee over the course of their lifetimes.
Take-home: A little bit of coffee/caffeine before important
tasks requiring alertness and energy can be a good thing.
Coffee & Parkinson’s
Parkinson’s disease is a fatal and incurable
brain disease that affects 1 percent to 2 percent of people over 65. Amazingly,
at least six studies have found that regular coffee drinkers are up to
80% less likely to develop Parkinson’s.
Researchers have identified a gene called GRIN2A that appeared to protect
people who drank coffee from developing Parkinson’s. GRIN2A is linked to
glutamate, a compound that is suspected of killing the brain cells that die off
in Parkinson’s patients. Glutamate can be affected by another compound called
adenosine, and coffee interferes with this process.
However: Only about 25% of the population has the gene variant of GRIN2A
that boosts the protective effect of coffee.
Take-home: Coffee may lower Parkinson’s risk, but only in a
small subset of people.
Coffee & Alzheimer’s
Speaking of neurodegenerative disorders, Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form
of dementia. There is no cure for the disease,
which gets progressively worse over time, and eventually leads to death.
What separates the research on Alzheimer’s from most of the other
information covered in this article is that it derived from directly controlled
trials versus simple observation.
Here, research indicates that people who drink about three cups of coffee a
day show a marked reduction in cognitive impairment compared to
non-drinkers. Once you got up to four or more cups per day, though, the
associated protection disappears.
This protection was not seen with tea or decaf coffee, so the benefit seems
to be from the combination of the caffeine and some of coffee’s bioactive
compounds.
In fact, new research from the University of South Florida found that this
combination boosts blood levels of a critical growth factor called GCSF
(granulocyte colony stimulating factor) that seems to prevent the formation of
Alzheimer’s disease. People with Alzheimer’s disease have less GCSF than the
rest of the population. Increasing GCSF in mice improves their memory.
In the U of South Florida study, the researchers compared the effects of
regular and decaf coffee to those of caffeine alone. In both Alzheimer’s mice
and normal mice, treatment with regular coffee dramatically increased blood
levels of GCSF; neither caffeine alone nor decaf coffee provided this effect.
GCSF seems to improve memory performance in the Alzheimer’s
mice in three ways:
- It recruits
stem cells from bone marrow to enter the brain and remove the harmful
beta-amyloid protein that initiates the disease.
- It creates
new connections between brain cells.
- It increases
the birth of new neurons in the brain.
As the lead researcher, neuroscientist Dr. Chuanhai Cao, remarked: “Coffee
is inexpensive, readily available, easily gets into the brain, appears to
directly attack the disease process, and has few side-effects for most of us”.
According to the researchers, no other Alzheimer’s therapy being developed
comes close to meeting all these criteria.
Take-home: Coffee seems to contain compounds that may reduce
Alzheimer’s risk; and may also be part of a treatment protocol in the future.
Coffee, antioxidants & cancer
While dark chocolate and green tea gather a lot of acclaim for their antioxidant content, coffee actually
outshines them both in this department.
In fact, the antioxidants in coffee may make up as much as 50-70% of the
total antioxidant intake of the average American! (Which is not necessarily a
good thing, because it means that there are a lot of vegetables not getting
eaten…)
Despite some general worries about the health effects of coffee, coffee
consumption is associated with an overall decreased risk of cancer. In particular
coffee consumption has been shown to be associated with a lower risk for oral, esophageal, pharyngeal, breast (in post-menopausal women), liver, colon, and aggressive prostate cancer.
When it comes to the prostate, researchers recently found that men who drank
the most coffee (6 or more cups per day) were nearly 60% less likely
to develop advanced prostate cancer than non-coffee drinkers. Other research
has shown that people who regularly consume two or more cups per day may have a
25% decreased risk of colon cancer.
Again, the research is mixed in part because of the variation in response to
coffee.
Take-home: Coffee may lower your cancer risk,
but don’t count on it as your only health strategy. And eat some vegetables
already.
Coffee & cardiovascular health
Drinking unfiltered types of coffee can increase your levels of LDL (aka “bad”) cholesterol. But overall the data seems
to indicate that coffee consumption may moderately reduce your risk of dying
from cardiovascular complications.
Take-home: Research is mixed on cardiovascular disease and
coffee.
Coffee & overall mortality
A recent study in The New England Journal of Medicine showed
that drinking two to three cups of coffee per day was associated with a 10%
decreased risk of death for men at any age, and a 13% decreased risk of death
for women at any age.
In general, coffee drinkers were less likely to die from heart or
respiratory disease, stroke, diabetes, injuries, accidents or infections.
(Which makes us wonder… what do they
die of? Espresso steamer mishaps?)
Take-home: Coffee appears to generally lower overall premature
mortality slightly.
Summary and Recommendations
Coffee’s not for everyone. And it’s not a magic bullet. Still, it seems to
have significant health benefits for those who can tolerate it. This includes:
- better
athletic and mental performance
- possibly
lower rates of some types of cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, and Type
2 diabetes
- possibly some
prevention of premature mortality and cardiovascular
disease
Most of the research on coffee is epidemiological. This means studies look
at associations rather than cause and effect. Simply because coffee is associated with
particular risks and benefits doesn’t necessarily mean that coffee causes all
of these risks or benefits.
Just as with all foods (and nutrients for that matter), dosage matters.
While some studies have found large intakes (5-6 cups) to have significant
benefits, other research suggests that drinking that much coffee is
counter-productive.
In general, it appears that drinking some coffee
is good, but more might not be
better, especially if you are a slow metabolizer. For those who are greatly
affected by coffee and caffeine, avoid it altogether or cut down your
consumption.
Want a quick and easy test of your coffee consumption? Ask yourself how you
feel physically, mentally, and emotionally a few hours after you drink some… as
well as if you miss your daily dose.
Also, go black if possible. Pumping your coffee full of cream, sugar, and
other exotic additives reduces any potential health benefits by adding
unnecessary calories and artificial flavours and sweeteners. (And Frappucinos or chocolate
covered coffee beans? C’mon.)
Taking all the data into consideration, it seems that your best bet is about
1-3 cups of coffee (8-24 oz) per day. This will maximize the benefits while
minimizing the risk.
And keep this in mind…while there is positive data on coffee, these
benefits don’t necessarily
include things like energy drinks and caffeine pills. There are many
antioxidants and bioactive compounds in coffee that are interacting with its
caffeine content to provide the benefits. So, unfortunately, Red Bull doesn’t
count.
(Article written by Brian St. Pierre from Precision
Nutrition)
For more ideas related to coffee and bodybuilding, watch this video - Benefits
& Side Effects of CAFFEINE | How much is Safe? Info by Guru Mann
Author
Bio:
Chris
Willitts (creator of V3), is the founder and owner of Vegetarian Bodybuilding.
V3 Vegetarian Bodybuilding System
is a mixture of science and author’s advice, providing users
with optimal diet and exercise. This system is designed for vegans and
vegetarians only.
A
lot of research has been put in this program. Furthermore, a lot of
professional bodybuilders and athletes tried and tested the program, praising
its progressiveness and efficiency.
The
program is about taking control of your own body and health according to your
potential and needs. And worry not; you’ll get plenty of proteins with this
system. It will boost you with energy, and you’ll feel just a strong as any
carnivore would (perhaps even stronger, depending on how much you invest in
your exercise). It avoids vitamins deficiency and provides you with a lot of
proteins, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants.
Instead
of saying things like “I think a plant-based diet is good for athletes and
bodybuilders,” the V3 Vegetarian Bodybuilding System claims “I know a
plant-based diet is good for athletes and bodybuilders, and I have results to
prove it.”
To
find out more, visit the website at V3 Bodybuilding – Coffee and Bodybuilding
