Coffee, and the effects it has on exercise.
Coffee, brings alertness to the mind, elevates the heartrate and therefore provides the abilty to have increased endurance, if it is consumed in moderation, along with double the amount of water to replenish the dehydration coffee can actually give you boost you need to push yourself on a good workout...
The Downside of Caffeine
Despite coffee/caffeine’s positive effects on psychological states and performance, there are numerous documented risks that must considered when consuming caffeine, whether for performance-enhancing effects or simply as a part of daily dietary consumption.
Caffeine stimulates the central nervous system and can produce restlessness, headaches, and irritability. Caffeine also elevates your heart rate and blood pressure. Over the long-term as your body gets used to caffeine, it requires higher amounts to get the same effects. Certainly, having your body in a state of hormonal emergency all day long isn’t very healthy.
Caffeine is also a diuretic and causes a loss of fluid, which then leads to a dehydrating effect. This is obviously not conducive to fitness activities such as resistance training, as fluid is needed for the transfer of nutrients to facilitate muscular growth. It is also important when considering the further loss of fluid while exercising in hot environments.
Perhaps the most important long-term problem is the effect of caffeine on sleep. The half-life of caffeine in the body is about 6 hours. If you drink a big cup of coffee with 200 mg of caffeine at 4PM, at 10PM you still have about 100mg in your body. By 4AM, you still have 50mg floating in your system. Even though you may be able to sleep, you may not be able to obtain the restful benefits of deep sleep. What’s worse, the cycle continues as you may use more and more caffeine in hopes of counteracting this deficit.
Caffeinated Conclusions…
Though caffeine has some benefits in relation to exercise performance, risks have been documented. Most problems seem evident with very high consumption. The American Heart Association says that moderate coffee drinking (one or two cups per day) does not seem to be harmful for most people. As with everything else, moderation is the key to healthy caffeine consumption. Further research is needed to clearly determine whether the performance-enhancing benefits of caffeine outweigh the potential risks.
Here's an intresting article
Here's an intresting article on coffee:
LONDON (AFP) - People who drink more than seven cups of coffee a day tend to hallucinate more than less caffeine-driven colleagues, according to a study published Wednesday.
Those with a high caffeine intake are three times more likely to have heard a non-existent person's voice than those who drink one cup a day, said the research by psychologists at Durham University.
But the study noted that the tendency to hear voices or have other hallucinations may not be caused by caffeine, but simply reflect the kind of people who drink lots of coffee.
"This is a first step towards looking at the wider factors associated with hallucinations," said Simon Jones, the PhD student who led the study.
"Previous research has highlighted a number of important factors, such as childhood trauma. Many such factors are thought to be linked to hallucinations, in part because of their impact on the body's reaction to stress."
Co-author Charles Fernyhough stressed that the study did not confirm a causal link between caffeine intake and hallucinations, noting also that three percent of people regularly hear voices in their head.
"One interpretation may be that those students who were more prone to hallucinations used caffeine to help cope with their experiences," he said.
"More work is needed to establish whether caffeine consumption, and nutrition in general, has an impact on those kinds of hallucination that cause distress."
The researchers now plan to study the impact of other forms of food and drink on hallucinations.
"It's surprising that there has been so little research into nutrition and hallucinations. In some countries high consumption levels of sugar and saturated fat are linked to poor mental health outcomes," said Jones.
"Given the link between food and mood, and particularly between caffeine and the body's response to stress, it seems sensible to examine what a nutritional perspective may add."
The study appears in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.
Taken from: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/090114/health/britain_health_coffee_psych...
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I didn't see any mention of
I didn't see any mention of the other significantly beneficial aspects of coffee.
Coffee is the major source of caffeoyl-quinic acids known as powerful antioxidants. Further, there is a strong correlation between coffee intake and a statistically significant decrease in the incidence of Alzheimers and Parkinson diseases, as well as statistically significant decrease in colon and other cancers.
The headaches from coffee drinking is individual and could be a tolerance issue and not a normal effect of caffeine per se. The withdrawal of caffeine is more normative for developing headaches and is only a temporary condition. (a Joke: and the remedy for that withdrawal is, well, drinking coffee.)
Also, the reputation for coffee leading to dehydration is being show to have been an exaggeration. Coffee is shown to be not nearly as dehydrating as is popularly thought.
The only real caution is all things in moderation--while not meaning (pun intended!) to sound too Aristotelean!
The idea is that 1-2 cups of coffee are beneficial for health. Of course timing is essential as mentioned above for good sleep. Though I know several people who can drink caffeinated beverages up until they sleep and they sleep soundly. I'm envious!
Yours,
Cameron
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