If coffee is my friend, then Starbucks is my best friend.  I love coffee.  At 20 I was drinking coffee black after vowing never to drink it just 2 years before that. 

Coffee (or caffeine) lets us work harder, faster, longer and think more clearly.  But what’s behind it?  To answer my own questions, here’s a quick “guide” to coffee.  After this, I’m going to Starbucks…

You’ve lost that lovin’ feeling
Coffee’s kick comes from caffeine’s ability to dilate your blood vessels and increase your heart rate.  At the same time, caffeine lets you perform tasks faster, think more clearly and make stronger and more meaningful mental associations. 

Each traditional cup of coffee contains about 100 milligrams of caffeine, with the lethal limit for humans being about 10 grams.  So that means that if you drink around 100 cups of coffee in one day, you’re dead.  Don’t do that.

But being careful with coffee isn’t just an empty “threat” — apparently it’s got the same addictive properties that you find in cocaine and heroin.  And if you drink above 5 cups of coffee a day, you could risk anxiety, headaches, and visits to the water closet that won’t be pleasant.


Sleep: don’t get your hopes up
Obviously caffeine screws with your sleep.  That much is obvious.  But how much is too much?  Apparently the caffeine found in coffee hangs out in your body for about 6 hours, even though it’s a diuretic (it moves liquids through your bodily more easily).  It causes sleep that’s less deep than normal — so when you wake up, your body will want more caffeine. 

I can’t say for sure how much is too much coffee to drink, but I’ll return to my last point: 5 cups or more is probably pushing it.  If you drink that much, don’t plan on sleeping that night, either.


The Health Benefits
So you can get addicted.  You can get headaches, you might not sleep as well and if you drink too much, it might not be pretty.  But there are some pretty solid health benefits, apparently…

WebMD reports that coffee can bring down the risk of Parkinson’s, diabetes, colon cancer, heart disease, can lessen damage on the liver from drinking, and can control asthma attacks.  Wow.

Check out this excerpt:
After analyzing data on 126,000 people for as long as 18 years, Harvard researchers calculate that compared with not partaking in America’s favorite morning drink, downing one to three cups of caffeinated coffee daily can reduce diabetes risk by single digits. But having six cups or more each day slashed men’s risk by 54% and women’s by 30% over java avoiders.

OK, so drinking 5 cups or more a day might be OK, especially if it can help you run faster, longer and overall be more athletic, as the article also reports. 

With that in mind, I’m going to Starbucks to get me a nice cappaccino.

Sources: Coffee Review’s “Coffee and Health,” Howstuffworks: “How Coffee Works,” WebMD: “Coffee: The New Health Food?”