Whether you take it with milk and sugar or black, brew your own at home or make stopping at Starbucks part of your morning ritual, you probably drink at least one cup of coffee every day.
In fact, 83 percent of Americans said they drink coffee, according to the National Coffee Association's 2013 survey on National Coffee Drinking Trends. Coffee is such a staple in our lives, and that's probably why we celebrate National Coffee Day on Monday, Sept. 29, a whole day devoted to getting some freebies and drinking everyone's favorite source of caffeine.
Because of coffee's popularity and the high amount of caffeine found in the drink, there have been many scientific studies through the years that give us some insight into coffee's health benefits. These studies tell us if coffee is good, bad or indifferent to our lives and how to get the most out of a brew. In honor of National Coffee Day, take a look at some of the most interesting studies about coffee published recently.
1. Drinking coffee before exercise can help burn more calories: Athletes that ingested caffeine before a workout burned 15 percent more calories for three hours after exercising than those who took a placebo, according to a study published in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism in June 2014.
2. Sequencing the coffee genome could lead to a better brew: Scientists sequenced the coffee genome and discussed their findings in a paper released in Science in September 2014. Their findings could have a huge impact on how we grow and drink coffee. Researchers could potentially discover why coffee plants have caffeine, find a way to protect coffee plants from climate change and learn how to make a tastier cup of Joe.
3. Don't start your day drinking coffee: Those hoping that drinking coffee immediately after waking up will give them their much-needed caffeine boost should probably wait a couple of hours. Steven Miller, a PhD candidate at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md. wrote that the human body is on a circadian rhythm that produces cortisol, often known as the "stress" hormone. Because of this, he suggested drinking coffee when your cortisol levels are lowest, which would first be between 9:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. during the day.
4. Drinking coffee can help your eyesight: Raw coffee contains chlorogenic acid, a strong antioxidant that helps prevent retinal degeneration in mice, according to an April 2014 study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. These findings show that drinking coffee might help prevent deteriorating eyesight and maybe even blindness that conditions such as glaucoma, aging and diabetes can cause.
5. Drinking coffee every day can reduce your risk of type 2 diabetes: A study led by researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health found that those who increased their daily dose of coffee by one cup during a four-year period lowered their risk of being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes by 11 percent compared to those who made no changes in their coffee consumption. Conversely, those who decreased their coffee intake by one cup during this period increased their risk of being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes by 17 percent.
6. Too much coffee can kill you: Men younger than 55 years old who drank more than 28 cups of coffee a week, or four cups of coffee a day, were 56 percent more likely to have passed away from any cause of death, according to a study published in August 2013 in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings. Women with a heavy consumption of coffee in that age range were twice as likely to have died.
7. Taking a nap after drinking coffee can help you stay awake: Researchers found that coffee can take up to 20 minutes to affect the brain, so evidence suggests that taking a nap for 20 minutes or less right after drinking coffee can help you stay alert for a longer period of time.
8. Drinking coffee can lower your risk of depression: Women who drank four or more cups of caffeinated coffee were 20 percent less likely to develop depression than women who drank none, according to a September 2011 study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
