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How Much Coffee Is Not Healthy
Too much caffeine consumption has long been linked with heart issues, anxiety and poor sleeping patterns, yet how much coffee should one consume in moderation? This article explores both sides of this debate from health experts’ insights.
Coffee contains antioxidants that may reduce your risk of heart disease, diabetes and some cancers; however, too much caffeine can cause jitteriness, anxiety and high blood pressure; furthermore, one recent study linked heavy coffee-drinking with an increased risk of dementia.
Experts generally recommend that adults consume no more than 400 milligrams of caffeine a day – approximately equivalent to four 8-ounce cups of regular coffee – in order to minimize adverse side effects, such as jitteriness, headache and anxiety as well as rapid heart rate.
Reason for this upper limit: caffeine may interfere with your body’s ability to absorb essential nutrients like iron and magnesium, and drinking too many calories from coffee may contribute to obesity or chronic diseases.
People with preexisting cardiovascular disease should consider cutting back even further on caffeine consumption to help manage risk for high blood pressure, kidney disease and cognitive decline. Lowering intake will not only lower risks but may help protect against heart failure, kidney disease and cognitive decline.
But if your blood pressure and cardiovascular issues are healthy, drinking coffee may not pose any major threats. Indeed, the coffee-drinking study that linked excess caffeine consumption with an increase in dementia risk was only correlational; another 2022 research paper from Journal of American Heart Association discovered moderate coffee drinkers generally had lower blood pressures than non-coffee drinkers.
What constitutes healthy eating? Essentially, this entails following a balanced diet made up of foods rich in nutrients (like fruits, vegetables, dairy and protein) while being low in calories, saturated fat, sodium and added sugar. The Food and Drug Administration may soon issue labels with “healthy” symbols which would allow consumers to easily identify foods that meet this criteria.
What does that mean for coffee? While black coffee contains zero calories, when loaded up with too much sugar or unhealthy ingredients it becomes far from nutritious. Furthermore, pregnant women and children should avoid too much caffeine consumption in their diets.
