In today’s society, many of us think that we can’t survive without coffee. After all, it’s one of the most popular beverages around the world.
Many people rely on coffee because they think it boosts energy, productivity, and properly functioning day-to-day life. That’s not entirely true. Even though coffee provides various health benefits, there are plenty of reasons why it’s considered a bad stimulant.
Your body doesn’t require coffee and dependency on it can lead to certain harmful effects on your body. Here are various reasons why coffee is bad news for you and how it affects your health.
Increases Anxiety Levels and Disrupts Sleep
It’s been proven that coffee usually increases anxiety levels in many people. This is because it increases adrenaline in the body.
If you suffer from anxiety, quitting caffeine for good can be one of the best decisions you make in your life.
Although coffee is a natural brain stimulant, it’ll affect your sleeping patterns and quality of sleep. Even if you don’t take it before you go to bed, it can still impact the amount of quality sleep you get.
People who’ve stopped taking coffee have often seen the quality of their sleep improve. In turn, this has left them more rested for the following day.
If coffee decreases your quality of sleep, try quitting it late in the day, like after 2:00 p.m.
Increases Blood Pressure
Coffee can raise your blood pressure levels. While the increase may only be for a short time, it’ll be dramatic.
For anyone with high blood pressure, drinking lots of coffee might have severe consequences. So, quitting coffee may help lower your blood pressure, and remove you from the risk of any related conditions.
It’s Addictive
Being addicted to any substance is never a good thing. While caffeine addiction isn’t as serious as an alcohol or drug addiction, it’s unhealthy to rely on coffee every single day.
When you drink coffee regularly, you become tolerant to it. One of two things can happen. The coffee either stops having the same effect on you, or you need a larger dose to get the same effect.
When you miss a few cups of coffee, you may get withdrawal symptoms, including headaches, exhaustion, irritability, and brain fog. This may last for several days.
Overcoming coffee addiction will let you have more power and freedom over yourself.
Provides Energy for a Short Time
Many people take coffee daily because they need an extra energy boost in the morning to get through the day. Over time, however, the body builds a tolerance to this. As a result, drinking coffee daily doesn’t provide energy benefits any more.
Coffee Affects Your Mood
Feel irritated and moody if you’ve not had your regular cup of coffee for some days? Well, drinking coffee on the regular can cause such fluctuations of mood as you’re so consumed by your desire for coffee.
If you don’t get your dose of coffee at your usual time, you may suddenly become irritated, even at minor details. Ditching coffee would put a stop to these mood swings. It’s unhealthy to allow any substance to impact your emotions and mood this way.
Drain on Finances
As many coffee devotees know, coffee is sometimes rather expensive. For example, some people spend $50 at Starbucks weekly. That might seem like a loose change, but in a year’s time, it can be as much as $2,500 for just coffee!
Stains Teeth
If you haven’t noticed yet, coffee tends to stain teeth. This is because of the high amounts of tannins in coffee, which buildup and cause tooth enamel.
It also has some acidity that’s awful for your teeth. Taking too much coffee can weaken your tooth enamel and eventually lead to tooth decay…yuck!
Causes Heartburn
When you’re through with the burping, please stop cursing the café you ate at last night. The food was neither bad nor infected. You also didn’t overeat.
Perhaps it’s the coffee speaking! Yeah, coffee causes burping too. It’s acidic and wouldn’t mind causing indigestion, gastrointestinal issues, heartburn, GERD, and dysbiosis.
You now know why you were turning and tossing in bed all night without finding relief. It certainly was the coffee.
Dehydration and Loss of Minerals
When you take coffee, you won’t necessarily run out of fluid, but you’ll be much more dehydrated than anyone who’s not had a sip of water. Why? Coffee dehydrates you!
This is because consuming too much coffee can make visits to the bathroom a little too often than normal. This may lead to the loss of vital minerals like calcium, potassium, and magnesium from the body.
What happens next? Nothing much, but you’ll need a lot more hospital visits with systemic problems because of imbalanced electrolytes in your body.
On the other hand, your body can absorb certain nutrients better if you don’t consume caffeine at all. The tannins in a coffee can possibly hinder the absorption of calcium, iron, and B vitamins.
This can especially be true for people who drink so much coffee, those with an imbalanced diet, or those who are older. Ditching caffeine altogether may help ensure you’re receiving all of the possible nutrients from your diet.
Cardiovascular Contractions
Coffee delays the absorption of glucose (yes, that how it controls appetite) and mostly leads to an increase in levels of homocysteine. If you didn’t know, your homocysteine levels will help you know your risk for diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. The higher your homocysteine levels, the more at risk you are to these conditions.
Final Thoughts
Of course, drinking coffee has its benefits. You may love the taste, or you may love the energy boost it gives you in the morning when you’re struggling to focus at work. However, it does come with a few negative effects and health complications if you take too much.
The solution? Well, drinking moderate amounts of coffee are perfectly alright, and may even be beneficial in more ways than one. But when you’re taking it once or twice every day, that’s when it begins to be a problem.
Calvin says
Lots of pros and cons, though caffeine does have some benefits for some