What's the first thing over 100 million Americans do when they wake
up? If you're one of the many coffee-addicted consumers, you
probably make a beeline for the coffee brewer and with your eyes
half open, brew up a fresh cup of the aromatic brown elixir. Now
despite the rumors that have circulated from Boston to Beijing,
coffee is actually a healthy beverage that is consumed by billions
around the world. Certainly, if you take a common sense approach to
whether coffee is safe (or not), it would be perverse to withhold
the provisional assent that it is indeed safe considering that
billions of individuals drink it every day.
Furthermore, the key ingredient in coffee, caffeine is actually an
amazing substance that has a wide variety of functions. For
instance, caffeine improves performance and endurance during
prolonged, exhaustive exercise. But it also promotes gains in
short-term, high-intensity athletic performance. Caffeine
decreases your perception of pain during exercise. This might
explain why fitness competitors routinely down a cup of coffee right
before exercise! Caffeine also improves mental alertness and
reduces your perception of fatigue. Moreover, habitual intake does
decrease caffeine's ergogenic properties.
Clearly, consume coffee or caffeine can have a myriad of health
benefits ranging from increased mental and physical performance,
enhanced lipolysis or fat burning, to an improvement in health (e.g.
decreased risk of type 2 diabetes).
