Coffee and Your Health

Have you ever found yourself shivering after drinking a nice cup of coffee?  It doesn't matter if it was a cup of espresso that you were drinking or a nice cup of flavored gourmet coffee because unfortunately you have to take the good with the bad as a coffee lover.  One of the biggest concerns among coffee drinkers is the connection between coffee and your health.  While regular coffee drinkers have known for some time that coffee isn't exactly the healthiest drink, there have been an increase in the number of studies dedicated to measuring the health effects of drinking coffee.

One of the most obvious consequences of drinking coffee is teeth staining or discoloration.  Discolored teeth are a constant worry among coffee lovers and it doesn't help that excessive coffee consumption is known to erode the color of one's teeth.  However, coffee is not the only culprit in tooth discoloration as drinking red wine, smoking cigarettes, and just the general aging process contributes to teeth discoloration and staining.  For decades, coffee lovers had to accept their fate that their love of coffee was going to lead into poor looking teeth.  However, with the rise of cosmetic dentistry as a field, coffee lovers are now able to enjoy the fact that the negative effects that drinking coffee has on one's teeth can be reversed by a number of cosmetic dental procedures like teeth whitening or obtaining porcelain veneers.

While the effects of massive coffee consumption on a person's dental health may have been minimized by the advent of cosmetic dentistry, there are still a number of health concerns that come with too much coffee drinking.  If you've ever drunk a ton (not literally but metaphorically) of coffee in a single day, you may have noticed that your body will begin to react in a strange way.  Many coffee drinkers are familiar with this jittery feeling and the term coffee jitters refer to this phenomenon.

Coffee jitters are a nervous condition that results from drinking too much coffee.  While it can be a bit unsettling, there is no long term health problems that are caused by having the dreaded coffee jitters.  However, the principal cause of the coffee jitters has become one of the most fascinating aspects of studies determining the effect of coffee on a person's health.  Coffee jitters are caused by an over consumption of caffeine, which is heavily contained in coffee.  Caffeine has been associated with addiction and in large, prolonged amounts is connected with a number of health risks.  For this reason, many fearful coffee lovers are switching from coffee to tea.  While tea contains amounts of caffeine, it does so in lower amounts.  Additionally, tea is a more attractive drink for some due to studies that have indicated that there is health benefits from drinking tea.

While coffee may not be the healthiest drink one can have, there are numerous food products that contain similar health problems.  To further illuminate the relationship between coffee and health, many studies are being performed.  While studies like the February 2003 Danish study that linked heavy coffee consumption during pregnancy to a significant increase in the risk of stillbirths, it is important to understand that most of these findings point to health problems developing from unnaturally heavy coffee consumption.  This Danish study showed that this increased risk of stillbirths occurred for those studies who drank eight or more cups of coffee a day.  Considering that most coffee lovers do not drink such a large amount, the moral of the story seems to be that while it's great to enjoy a nice cup of coffee there is a line that can be crossed. 

Be smart and don't drink too many cups of coffee a day.  If you do this, you won't have to worry about the effects that coffee has on your health.