Posted on 07/23/2021 10:39:30 AM PDT by Red Badger
Perhaps you're reading this with your phone in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, or while heading out from work to meet a colleague for work. If that's the case, we have some very good news -- although, perhaps with a small caveat.
Over the past few years, a series of studies have come out showing that drinking coffee--in fact, drinking a lot of coffee--has significant health benefits. In fact, some suggested there could be big benefits in drinking copious amounts.
The big unanswered question, however, has been whether there's any amount of coffee that's actually "too much." Now, a brand new study that examined 347,077 coffee drinkers, seems to have found an answer: the precise number of cups of coffee at which at which health problems might begin to show up, and could even outweigh the benefits.
Let's not hide the ball, By synthesizing several of these of the earlier "positive" studies with the new one out of the University of South Australia that suggests an upper limit, we can come up with the perfect number: Five cups of coffee per day.
Here's the background, the new study, and why when it comes to coffee, five is a magic number.
>>>>>> First, drink more coffee
First, the benefits. Study after study after study suggests real benefits to drinking coffee from a health perspective. As a coffee fiend myself, I've followed several of them over the years, including:
* A study in which researchers funded by the American Heart Association and the University of Colorado School of Medicine found that risk of heart failure or stroke went down 8 percent for each additional cup of coffee per day.
* A British study of 498,123 people found that the ones who habitually drank coffee were between 10 and 15 percent less likely to die during any 10 year period than non-coffee drinkers.
* A Stanford University study that tracked 100 people over several years, and found that coffee drinkers tended to live longer than non-coffee drinkers. Here, the theory--just a theory, but still -- was that increased caffeine consumption might counteract the "fundamental inflammatory mechanism associated with human aging."
* A Spanish study found that drinking four cups of coffee per day led to a 64 percent lower risk of dying among study participants compared to non-coffee drinkers.
If you read through all of those studies, you come away with the idea that drinking as many as four cups of coffee per day could have some significant health benefits.
But if four is good, then how about five? And if five is good, why not 10?
>>>>> But then, stop at five
While I consider myself a pretty serious coffee drinker, the truth is I would rarely go past three cups in a day: one or two with breakfast, and perhaps one in the afternoon.
According to this new study out of South Australia, however, I've got some room to go before hitting the danger area. The problem, once you reach it, is the point at which the increased stimulation can lead to heart disease.
"In order to maintain a healthy heart and a healthy blood pressure, people must limit their coffees to fewer than six cups a day -- based on our data six was the tipping point where caffeine started to negatively affect cardiovascular risk," said Professor Elina Hyppönen of the Australian Centre for Precision Health, one of the study's authors.
Specifically, once you reach six cups of coffee per day, the risk of heart disease increases by 22 percent according to the study.
The study was published in the March 2019 edition of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, and publicized last week.
Would be nice if they defined cup and said something about us espresso drinkers.
One pot a day for the past 35 years has been just fine.
Mine is only 64oz.
16 tablespoons = 1 cup = 8 fluid ounces!
Heck, yeah! A splash of Scotch is also rather warming.
Define “cup” Mine holds 20 ounces but I only drink 3 or 4 a day.
Maybe they’re twins. :)
My irritation with these articles is that they rarely, if ever, define "cups."
The average china cup of the type that fits on a saucer holds about 4.5 ounces, which is a little less than half a standard measuring "cup" found in recipes, which holds 8 ounces.
Many coffee addicts routinely use a coffee mug, which holds around 14 ounces, nearly twice as much as the standard 8 oz. "cup," and three times as much as a china cup.
The word "ounce" does not appear in this article. The article says, "five cups." So, from china cup to mug, that is a range of 22.5 ounces to 70 ounces. Or, if we are using the 8 oz definition of cup, it would be 40 ounces, which would total 8.8 china cups or 2.86 mugs. Go figure.
Racist?
p
grams of caffiene would be a better measurement. Five cups of double expresso are different than five cups of Folger’s crystals.
.............
Norwegian coffee cup
I never excede 5 pots per day...
Noting said about coffee’s history. Coffee originated in Ethiopia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coffee
Animals consume coffee berries. Humans have been eating roiasted coffee berries for a very long time, as well as drinking the beverage.
If you ever travel to central Ethipia, you will experience the best tasting fresh coffee in the whole world.
It is ambrosia. Nothing like anything you can buy in the West or in a store.
I expect the researches would have been doubly surprised by the health benefits of they used fresh coffee from Central Ethipia.
Everybody here on the thread seems to think 6 oz teacup..............
That’s 1.25 quarts of coffee per day. I’ll have to cut back.
I’ve been restricting myself to 1 cup in the morning. Yeeeeeha! Here we go 5 cups seems limitless from that perspective.
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