Slow Sunday brunches, stressed Monday mornings on the tram, late evenings before the deadline.
Everything gets better with a cup of coffee, right?
Even though coffee (americano) is allowed in almost every diets, coffee does have some clear health drawbacks that often remain underexposed in the current health conversation.
It is well known that coffee is bad when you drink large amounts of it.
However, one cup a day also directly affects your body.
1. Coffee fools your brain
Normally you get more tired during the day. This is due to the substance adenosine. When that chemical binds to certain proteins in the brain called receptors, your brain activity decreases.
The opposite happens when you sleep: over time, the concentration of adenosine in the brain decreases and brain activity increases.
The caffeine from our coffee is a bit like adenosine. In our body, caffeine therefore wants to sit on the same receptor. When that happens, we no longer feel tired. Caffeine is in the same place as adenosine, but it does not have the same effect on the brain there.
Coffee may help us through the day, but be careful with the amount you drink. Over time, our body makes more and more adenosine receptors, requiring more coffee to get the same effect. That way, people can become addicted to caffeine.
2. Coffee inhibits absorption of vitamins, minerals, metals
This may not sound like a 'super unhealthy', but it actually is.
Your body is an ingenious system in which everything works together.
A shortage of certain vitamins has a major influence on the presence of all other vitamins, minerals and metals.
And this in turn has an impact on your hormones; all of them.
Hormones, in turn, determine everything in your body: your weight, the quality of your skin, your mood, energy, strength and concentration.
In short; something as small as a vitamin deficiency can have disastrous consequences for your body, mind and health.
It has been proven that coffee inhibits the absorption of:
Zinc
Calcium
Iron
Magnesium
B1
B2
B2
B5
B6
B8
B11
B12
3. Coffee makes your body acidic.
What is an acidic body?
The acidity of your blood (expressed in pH value) is determined by the amount of acidic and basic substances in your blood. In the best case, these two substances are in equilibrium: the so-called acid-base equilibrium.
Diet, alcohol, caffeine, stress, air pollution, medication and excessive exercise can leave too much acid waste in your body.
These accumulate in your body; bones, tissues, organs and joints.
Symptoms of an acidic body
Skin issues
Lack of energy
Stiff muscles
Hair loss
Joint pain
Infection susceptibility
High bloodpressure
High cholesterol
Type 2 diabetes
Gout
Kidney stones
Stroke
4. Coffee fools your brain
In brief: Coffee makes your body think you got out of bed just rested, while you have been struggling for 16 hours to meet your deadline.
This sounds like no big deal but after a week or two of drinking coffee on a daily basis this will cause your brain to become naturally exhausted: which is the opposite from what we actually want.
5. Your blood pressure will increase.
Coffee causes a short but extreme spike in your blood pressure. This sudden increase takes all the negative effects with it.
6. Coffee inhibits your natural detox
Coffee can only be broken down by the liver, so after a lovely morning cup, your body will be busy breaking down caffeine for the next 4-6 hours.
This means that your liver cannot use itself optimally to clean your body of toxins. Nor can it use repair itself.
During a detox, in which you are actively detoxifying your body (on for example a juice cleanse or any other way), as well as during daily life, it is important to give your body the opportunity to repair itself.
Which is incredibly important when it comes to staying healthy and illness free.
So after all this the conclusion is to limit the number of cups of coffee you drink or keep this cup of happiness for special moments only.