Coffee Bean Cure?

With as much time as I spend writing in various Starbucks establishments, Peet’s Coffee nooks, and other small local cafes and drinking houses, it’s no wonder that my eyes bulged out and my taste buds perked up when I read that coffee can actually be healthy for you. The same coffee that sends people caffeine headaches when not consumed by a certain time of day, the same coffee people wait in long lines for just to order when they could brew it at home in mere minutes? Yes, that coffee, the same one responsible for over 19,000 research studies done on its positive healthy effects instead of its negative addictive qualities.

Some scientists say that drinking a normal amount of coffee per day—about 1 to 3 cups—can boast a bunch of benefits like lowering your risk for colon cancer, gallstones, Parkinson’s disease, cirrhosis of the liver, and possibly slow down the onset of Type II diabetes.

A study presented to the American Diabetes Association that was conducted at the Harvard School of Public Health showed that regularly consuming coffee was helpful in staving off diabetes, or at least slowing down the diagnosis by keeping it farther down the line in the future.

Besides the long term effects drinking coffee regularly can help, there are also short term effects that you should already feel if you are the type of person who enjoys a cup a java every day or every now and again. Most often people need coffee in the morning to help them wake up or get a jumpstart in your day, which is why Starbucks always has a hoard of suits and skirts buzzing around, sometimes before the doors are even open. By drinking coffee, your mind is able to think clearer and faster, you stay alert longer, the drowsiness has gone away (unfortunately it doesn’t take the bags from under your eyes) and you are eager to start or continue a productive day. Coffee also has a high percentage of antioxidants perfect for helping your body fight off disease and free radical cell damage.

Although between 1 to 3 cups per days sounds healthy, Harvard went on to say that after looking at the data from the past two decades from over 100,000 participants, the calculations show that having up to 6 or more cups of coffee each day cut the risk of diabetes for women by 30 percent and a whopping 54 percent for men. There are six separate studies that were conducted showing that the risk for being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease was lowered by 80 percent with regular coffee indulgence.

Dr. Tomas DePaulis, scientist at the Institute for Coffee Studies at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee says that the findings are putting coffee in a better light, adding to its surge in popularity, “Overall, the research shows that coffee is far more healthful than it is harmful….For most people, very little bad comes from drinking it, but a lot of good.”

Because of coffee’s addictive state due to the high caffeine content, coffee has definitely gotten a bad rap over the years lending itself to heart disease and hypertension when it should have been fighting for its reputation. Although most of the studies’ findings had scientists reporting that more tests need to be done for absolute certainty, most positive studies are just one step closer to becoming fact. In order to keep the hoardes from getting bigger, the lines from getting longer, and the United States coffee demand at an average pace, no one is recommending that joe-drinkers go on a strict “coffee diet.”

If you’d rather not ingest coffee to help your body, or just don’t like the taste, make a homemade mask out of the beans instead and use it on your face, body, or hair for shinier follicles, smoother skin, and a better complexion. In fact a lot of expensive lotions and creams have a coffee scent, and even some anti-cellulite products use extracts of coffee in order to use the caffeine as a benefit for tightening the skin.

So the next time you start to feel guilty going through that java drive-thru for the third time in a day looking for that coffee lift, just remember you are essentially helping your body in the long run.