We all love our coffee... it smells fantastic, tastes delicious and get's us all going in the morning. Plus, one of the health effects of coffee is it's not going to break your calorie allotment for the day, unless you start adding all the fancy toppings...
A small serving of black coffee has just 7 calories, but add half and half and the number jumps to 46 calories. Liquid nondairy cream adds 48 calories. A single teaspoon of sugar adds 23 calories.
With the good news outweighing the bad in terms of health, coffee has yet to be proven beyond doubt to prevent anything.
Studies typically don't have people drinking (or skipping) coffee for science, they ask instead about coffee drinking habits, and this isn't the type of research that shows cause and effect.
Coffee drinkers might have other habits that impact how healthy they are - things like better eating habits, being more active or having some protective genetics.
The average American drank 416 cups of java during 2009. Here's the latest news on coffee and it's impact on some pretty serious, life altering conditions.
Type 2 Diabetes has data that's pretty solid when it comes to coffee drinking. There are over 15 published papers, and the majority of these have found a benefit from coffee on preventing diabetes.
There's even research that decaffeinated coffee might offer the same beneficial effects as the regular kind. According to researchers, coffee's benefit comes from the whole package - antioxidants, minerals like magnesium and chromium that help with insulin usage.
We know that type 2 diabetes ups the risk of stroke and heart disease. Coffee drinking has also been associated with reduced risks for heart arrhythmias in both men and women, as well as the chance of stroke in women.
In research involving almost 130,000 participants, those who drank 1 to 3 servings of coffee a day had a 20% less chance of being hospitalized due to abnormal heart rhythms than nondrinkers.
Parkinson's disease also boasts data that's always been consistent. Drinking more coffee is linked to a lower risk of Parkinson's. It might be the caffeine, but no one is sure just how this works.
Dementia, along with Alzheimer's disease has also been found to be linked to coffee drinking. A study in 2009 in Finland and Sweden found that those who drank 3 to 5 cups a day had a 65% lower chance of being diagnosed with dementia and even Alzheimer's compared to those who don't drink, or only occasionally drink coffee.
Cancer of the liver shows consistent data when it comes to coffee drinking too, but it's weaker in comparison to type 2 diabetes. All of the research has shown that a high coffee intake is associated with a lower chance of liver cirrhosis or cancer. It's interesting to be sure, but no one is sure how it works and the research demonstrates an association, not cause and effect.
Back in August 2010 coffee intake of 12 ounces per day was found to be safe for pregnant women. But the impact of higher caffeine doses are not known. There is research that finds pregnant women who have too much coffee might be at a higher risk of miscarriage than those who don't drink or only drink coffee at a moderate level.
But just because there are health effects of coffee, it doesn't mean it is all good for you. Coffee has antioxidants to be sure, but it hasn't been shown that drinking coffee brings an increase of antioxidants within the body. Do those ever-helpful antioxidants even show up in the bloodstream after drinking a steaming cup?
And caffeine raises blood pressure along with epinephrine (adrenaline)... this can certainly cause problems. Something else that probably doesn't rank amongst the good health effects of coffee is that besides getting you going, coffee also has you going... to the bathroom, a lot. Caffeine after all is a mild diuretic... making you need to go more than you normally would. Interestingly, decaf coffee has the same impact as water on urine production.
