Five Healthy Reasons to Enjoy Your Cup O' Joe

Patients coming to the Whitaker Wellness Institute sometimes express surprise that we serve coffee. Doesn’t it increase the body’s acidity? Aren’t health-conscious people supposed to drink tea instead? Isn’t caffeine bad for you?

If coffee were harmful, then every morning emergency rooms around the world would be choked with people suffering the ill effects of our favorite breakfast beverage. Of course, this isn’t the case. Coffee is not harmful. On the contrary, I consider it to be a health food, and hundreds of studies bear this out.

Here are five healthy reasons to drink coffee:

1. It slashes your diabetes risk. A meta-analysis published in the Archives of Internal Medicine showed that every cup of regular coffee you drink lowers your risk of type 2 diabetes by seven percent. Plus, people who drank three to four cups of decaffeinated coffee per day had a 33 per cent lower risk of type 2 diabetes compared to non-coffee drinkers.
2. Coffee reduces the risk of Parkinson’s disease by as much as 80 percent.
3. It protects against Alzheimer’s, improves concentration and alertness, and boosts your mood.
4. Coffee consumption decreases suicide risk. In fact, coffee’s aroma alone can relieve stress in animals.
5. It can halt a full-blown asthma attack, stopping it in its tracks.

Want more reasons to enjoy your morning coffee? It can stop migraine headaches, curb appetite, prevent tooth decay, and increase the effectiveness of aspirin and other analgesics. And if you drink coffee before a workout you'll enjoy both increased endurance and reduced muscle pain.

So, go ahead and drink up—but don’t go overboard. There are some folks who need to be careful about how much coffee they drink. If you’re pregnant or expecting to become pregnant, I’d recommend that you go easy on caffeine. And if you’re struggling with osteoporosis, limit your coffee intake to a cup every now and then—higher intake has been linked with a decrease in bone density.

Otherwise, enjoy the boost to your mood, your energy, and your overall health!

Now it’s your turn: What type of coffee do you enjoy drinking?

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