Is Coffee Good or Bad for You?

Will coffee really stunt your growth? Or give you heart problems? What about your teeth? Learn the truth behind common myths about that cuppa joe in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain stuff. From How Stuff Works, Hey, rain
Stuff Lauren Bogle bam here coffee is a beverage with
laura and legend as rich as a double caramel latte,
but far more contrary. An advertisement from the first coffee
house in England promoted coffee is good against sore eyes
and excellent to prevent and cure the dropsy, gout and scurvy.

(00:25):
But in the early seventeen hundreds, Germans believed the beverage
made women sterile. But an old wives tale states that
if bubbles appear in your java, you're due to come
into some money, which wouldn't be a bad thing considering
the price of a cup of these days. In more
recent times, another idea took hold of the public's imagination
regarding coffee, that it had the power to stunt a
child's growth. But just as a pot of coffee boiling

(00:47):
over doesn't actually mean that it's going to rain, which
was a thing that people thought at one point. The
assertation that the drink makes for a nation of hobbits
has been proven false. How coffee got associated with this
smith is clo in the espresso steam of history, but
most experts agree that it has something to do with
an early study linking caffeine to reduced bone mass and osteoporosis.

(01:09):
Those studies, however, were conducted on elderly people whose diets
were lacking in calcium, which could easily have explained the
loss of bone mass. Subsequent studies showed that women ages
sixty five to seventy seven who drank about eighteen ounces
of caffeine daily did have greater bone loss over a
three year period than those who did not, But the
effects occurred only in women with unusual variations in their

(01:31):
vitamin D cell receptors, and the effects were completely mitigated
if the women ingested their recommended daily one thousand, two
hundred milligrams of calcium. Focusing exclusively on children, a more
recent study tracked eighty one teenagers for six years. The
result there was no difference in bone density between the
biggest buzz catchers and those who drank the least amount

(01:53):
of caffeine. But just because a cup of Joe won't
keep your little Joe's and Josephine's pint sized all their
lives thus mean that there isn't cause to be concerned
about children and coffee these days, coffee creations can seem
more like a dessert than a simple pick me up
in a cup. The Starbucks menu include such treats as
a mint mocha chip frappuccino blended with chocolate and tapped

(02:13):
with whipped cream, while Duncan Donuts offers up vanilla bean
coolatta's that list corn syrup not once, but twice on
their ingredients list, along with sugar and sweetened condensed skim milk.
So although it's been proven that there are relatively minor
health issues associated with caffeine jitteriness, anxiety, heartburn, insomnia, it's
actually the other ingredients that are added to coffee, especially sugar,

(02:36):
that have nutritionists worried. It's no secret that America has
a burgeting problem with childhood obesity and diabetes, and eight
hundred and sixty calorie packed drinks like the large Kolatta
are not helping. This is particularly troubling when, according to
the National Coffee Association, eighteen to twenty four year olds
represent the fastest growing segment of people turning on to

(02:57):
coffee every year. In addition to expand and young waistlines,
coffee can cause the amouth to dry out, which contributes
to tooth decay. The problem is compounded by the fact
that the tanic acid in coffee can stain teeth enamel,
giving some grins an unwanted mocuchi. No tinge, and coffee
doesn't just affect the health of twenty some things. Pregnant
women are also warned to consume no more than two

(03:19):
cups per day. Researchers in England found that pregnant women
who drank more than two hundred milligrams of caffeine per day,
the amount in two average sized cups of coffee, were
more likely to give birth to underweight babies. Lower birth
weights can also lead to spontaneous miscarriages, another health concern
with which caffeine has previously been associated. But if you

(03:39):
relatively limit your caffeine intake, drink enough water, get enough calcium,
and don't add shovelfuls of sugar to your java, the
health benefits of coffee may far outweigh its negatives. Far
from being the devil's drink, as coffee was once called
by Christians in the fifteen hundreds, study upon study has
proven that coffee can have health benefits. At one time,

(04:00):
coffee was thought to have negative cardiovascular effects, including heart
attack and abnormal heart rhythms, although it does cause minor
and temporary increases in blood pressure. According to an Iowa
women's health study that tract twenty seven thousand women for
fifteen years, those who consumed one to three daily cups
of coffee reduced their overall risk of cardiovascular disease by

(04:22):
It was also once thought that coffee could be a
major contributing factor in pancreatic cancer, due to a Harvard study. However,
coffee's role as carston gen has since been disproven, and
current research has shown that it can help ward off
breast and uterine cancer in women but white. There's more,
A study of over a hundred and twenty five thousand

(04:42):
members of the Kaiser Permanente Health Plan showed that heavy
alcohol drinkers cut their risk of cirrhosis by per cup
of coffee per day, and even among non tipplers. Coffee
has been shown to slash liver cancer risk, and two
global studies have shown that coffee reduces the risk of
type two diabetes, sometimes up to even better. Those beneficial

(05:04):
effects are related to chlorogenic acid, which is found both
in decaf and regular brews. However, excess consumption of anything,
including caffeine, is never a good idea. The magic number
four coffees benefits seems to be between one and four
cups a day, So while the old wives tale about
coffee stunting your growth isn't really true, another piece of

(05:26):
traditional wisdom certainly is all things in moderation. Today's episode
was written by Michael Franco and produced by Tyler Clang,
with kind engineering assistance from Ramsey Young. For more on
this and lots of other piping hot topics, visit our
home planet, how Stuff Works dot com