Top Ten Excellent Reasons To Drink Coffee

Used to be that coffee was looked down on as a guilty pleasure. No longer!

Not only is coffee the greatest source of antioxidants in the western diet, it is protective for health and has been shown to improve athletic performance by a whopping 20 to 25 percent. Reasons to drink coffee don’t stop there. Here are ten more incredible benefits of coffee.

#1: Increase Fat Burning

There is compelling evidence that coffee increases your metabolic rate so that you burn more calories, and it can help shift the body to burn fat rather than glucose for energy. Consuming it as part of a healthy, balanced diet that is mindful of portions can help you improve body composition.

#2: Boost Strength & Power Performance

Coffee enhances concentrations of the stimulatory hormones, norepinephrine and epinephrine, and it decreases the sensation of pain that is associated with fatigue. The result is greater strength and power for increased athletic performance.

#3: Increase Training Motivation

Coffee is great for getting psyched to train so that you get a higher quality workout. The caffeine in coffee can boost training drive and vigor, which translates to a significant increase in performance.

#4: Reduce Muscle Soreness

You might be surprised to learn that coffee can have a dramatic effect on reducing DOMS muscle soreness. Coffee is an especially effective treatment for DOMS because in addition to reducing pain, it can restore strength capacity that is reduced in the post-workout period.

#5: Improve Reaction Time

One of the best things about coffee is that it improves reaction time and training drive when you’re suffering from sleep deprivation. Taking 4 mg/kg of body weight of caffeine led athletes to voluntarily do more reps using 85 percent of the 1RM load when sleep deprived, resulting in greater volume compared to a placebo group.

#6: Boost Mood & Decrease Depression

Anyone who’s a serious coffee drinker can attest that coffee is a major mood booster. The cool thing is that the mood enhancement translates into lower depression risk. In one study, women who drank four or more cups of coffee a day had a 20 percent lower risk of becoming depressed.

#7: Lower Cancer Risk

Because coffee is rich in the antioxidants caffeic and chlorogenic acid, it can decrease risk of a variety of cancers, including lung, prostate, breast, stomach, endometrial, pancreatic, and colon cancer. The effect appears to be especially powerful for reducing cancer of the sex organs because it helps raise levels of enzymes in the liver that help metabolize estrogen safely in both men and women.

#8: Reduce Risk Of Diabetes

Coffee has a variety of metabolic benefits, which means serious coffee drinkers have a significantly lower risk of diabetes. The fact that it improves metabolic flexibility (fat burning), aids insulin health, and moderates glucose tolerance all contribute to less diabetes.

#9: Better Blood Pressure & Improved Vascular Function

Although caffeinated coffee increases blood pressure acutely, the long-term effect is lower blood pressure in regular drinkers due to how it improves blood vessel health. This makes coffee protective for the cardiovascular system, with heart disease and heart attack rates decreasing in both men and women who regularly drink coffee.

#10: Reduce Risk Of Mortality

At least 5 recent studies show that drinking coffee is associated with a decreased risk of mortality in men and women from a variety of ethnicities. For example, in one analysis, men who drank 2 to 3 cups a day had a 10 percent lower risk of mortality, and those who drank 4 to 5 cups per day had a 12 percent lower risk. The figures were slightly higher in women, and they remained after adjusting for cofounders like age, body fat, race, education, and lifestyle factors.