Why I wrote this:

I was curious to find out if coffee was really healthy or not because I like to drink it but I have heard that it is not healthy. After I did research on it I found that it is very healthy as long as you drink it responsibly. 

Lets Begin

 Nowadays coffee is grown everywhere but according to the Ethiopian legend, people might have been given the idea to consume coffee from a goat. Goat herder, Kaldi, supposedly noticed that his goats became energetic tending to stay up very late after eating beans from a certain tree. Kaldi then reported what he saw to a local monastery. The monastery then made a drink out of the beans that kept him alert for the long hours of evening prayer. News of this spread rapidly and knowledge of these beans made there way all around the globe first spreading to the Arabian Peninsula. These beans were valued greatly in Europe and the Americas. In 1714, the mayor of Amsterdam presented a coffee tree as a gift to Louis XIV. Now this crop has become so wide spread that most people have tried it at one point. When I was younger I never tried coffee because I always heard that it was bad for you. I decided to give it a try and recently I have started to drink it a lot because I really like the benefits that I can feel immediately after drinking a cup. I feel more alert. I notice that I am more content and that I'm over all in a better mood while becoming more focused. Coffee is an acquired tastes, at least for me it was. When I first tried coffee it tasted very bitter. After a while of drinking coffee, the taste started to taste really good. How bad is coffee though I started to question after I read how 17 year old Jasmine Willis, a Durham, UK waitress woke up in the hospital after drinking 7 double espressos in 2007. Coffee has always been debated on whether its health benefits outweigh its side effects, but its not till recently that researchers have begun to figure out that rather the question is at what age does it become healthy to drink coffee, and what is the right amount to drink before it becomes unhealthy. Some people assume that coffee can cause children headaches, difficulty concentrating, difficulty sleeping and can stunt their growth. They also believe coffee can cause weight gain and other complications in adults. Researchers have discovered that coffee is very healthy if you drink it in moderation, black, and after childhood ends. There are errors in the arguments of those who believe coffee is unhealthy and there are many benefits of drinking it, which is why young adults and older should drink coffee every day.  

Coffee is very healthy as consumption leads to a decrease in risk of type two diabetes, Parkinson's, liver cancer, liver disease, and an increase in overall heart health. The main reason for this is because coffee contains many minerals and vitamins. The Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) conducted a study on coffee consumption and found that consumption lowers your risk for diabetes. “The researchers found that the participants who increased their coffee intake by more than one cup a day (on average, an increase of 1.69 cups per day) over a 4-year period had an 11% lower type 2 diabetes risk over the subsequent 4 years, compared with people who did not change their intake”, states Dr. Simin Liu. In another study, researchers in the UK concluded, “higher coffee and caffeine intake is associated with a significantly lower incidence of Parkinson's disease.” They also said that giving coffee to Parkinson’s disease patients can actually help lessen the symptoms. Drinking coffee regularly also decreases the risk of liver cancer and liver disease. Dr. Carlo La Vecchia, the lead researchers of Milan's Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri, said "our research confirms past claims that coffee is good for your health and particularly the liver.” It can lower your risk for liver cancer by 50%. According to a study at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program, California, USA, coffee can reduce the risk of primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC), a rare disease that affects the liver. Lastly, drinking coffee is overall good for the heart. Researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Harvard School of Public Health, said that drinking coffee in moderation can lower your chance of heart failure by 11 percent. They backed this claim by a study of people in Europe who drank four cups of coffee per day. So if there are so many positive effects of drinking coffee why does anyone think that coffee is bad for you? Most people don’t know about these benefits which is part of the reason why coffee often gets a bad reputation even thought it has so many health benefits.

  Like most things, if you do not drink coffee responsibly, as in over drinking, not waiting until you are old enough, and adding a bunch of sugar, you will experience negative side effects that make the benefits hard to see. Deciding how much coffee is the right amount is not cut and dry as coffee varies on the amount of caffeine in a cup. Also certain forms of coffee have gotten stronger over the years. Originally, coffee was brewed with water and served as a drink. However, people have developed ways to condense this coffee down. In France, they serve coffee as a shot, or about 1.5 ounces, and it is packed full of caffeine. This can make it easier for some people to drink too much. Most people are able to control their intake but some people over do it. The consumption of coffee causes a release of dopamine in your brain. This is healthy for you as many neurological disorders such as Parkinson disease are caused by a lack of dopamine. Dopamine also makes you feel good. This is why some people can become addicted to coffee. Some times people will drink a lot of coffee, build up a tolerance to their normal coffee intake, and then try to drink more and more to get a larger dopamine release. The number one argument that people will use against coffee is that people can end up in the hospital from over dosing, just like 17 year old Jasmine Willis did. There are many cases where people drink too much coffee or caffeine and end up in the hospital from heart attacks or other complications. Overdoing anything healthy can cause it to become unhealthy. Take exercise for example. If some one runs for an hour or two a day it is generally considered healthy. On the other hand if someone runs for 20 hours straight it is not unlikely that they will have health complications and their run will become unhealthy. The key is to keep your coffee intake at a moderate level. Jasmine did not drink coffee in moderation. She had 7 double espressos. This is similar to 14 regular cups. This is an absurd amount and this is clearly not what experts recommend. Another reason some people think coffee is unhealthy is because it does not always react well with children. According to Kids Health, coffee can cause children to have symptoms of upset stomach, headaches, difficulty concentrating, difficulty sleeping, and increased heart rate. One of the main reasons for this is that small doses affect them greatly. People who don’t think drinking coffee is healthy would ask why it is not good for children then. You can use weight lifting as a way to explain this. Children who start lifting weights too young are said to be at risk of stunting their growth. This is because their body’s are not fully developed yet. That does not mean that weight lifting is unhealthy. On the contrary, it is actually known to be healthy. Children are not done growing and fully developing so they should wait until they are towards the end of their adolescent years to drink coffee if they want to reap the benefits. People often say that all of the sugar and sweeteners added in coffee are worse than the benefits. Only 35% of Americans say they prefer to drink coffee black while 65% say they prefer to add sugar and cream. No wonder so many people consider coffee unhealthy. People are choosing to add sugar and chemicals and then blame the negative effects on the coffee. Almost all Frappuccino’s have sugar in them, averaging around 64 grams of sugar. All this added sugar can have the opposite effect of the coffee and actually cause diabetes. There is no doubt that this is not healthy for you but coffee naturally doesn’t have any sugar. The problem is people assume that they are just drinking coffee, when in fact they really are drinking a Frappuccino, which is not the same. So, if you want your coffee to be healthy you can drink it black and not have to worry about any of the side effects from the sugar. 

 Drinking coffee has additional benefits besides decreasing risk of type two diabetes, Parkinson's, liver cancer, liver disease, and an increasing overall heart health. Drinking coffee gives you more energy, helps you burn fat, improves physical performance, contains essential nutrients, fights depression, and is a great source of antioxidants. According to Kris Gunnars coffee is a stimulant which blocks a neurotransmitter called Adenosine. This increases the release of dopamine enhancing memory, mood, energy levels, and reaction times. Kris Gunnars also states, “Several studies show that caffeine can boost the metabolic rate by 3-11%.” This helps burn fat and is overall healthy. Drinking coffee also increases the adrenaline levels in our body. This gives people an advantage in their physical performance. Unlike many performance enhancing products, coffee is one of the very few healthy products. Coffee can be substituted for pre workouts that are very bad for the heart and general health. Coffee also contains six main essential Nutrients: Riboflavin, Pantothenic Acid, Manganese, Potassium, Magnesium, and Niacin. Harvard conducted a study in 2011 about coffee and found that women who drank four cups a day were 20% less likely to become depressed and individuals who drank four cups per day were 53% less likely to commit suicide. Authority Nutrition also had some opinions on coffee. They said that coffee contains a massive amount of antioxidants and that most people in the western world get more antioxidants from coffee than from fruits and vegetables combined. This is not saying that coffee contains more antioxidants than fruits and vegetables. Americans generally do not consume a lot of fruits and vegetables and coffee contains a lot of antioxidants so consuming coffee is an excellent way to help make up for these loss antioxidants.  

Final Words

 Drinking coffee is very healthy and is a good habit that you should do as long as you know the right time and way to drink it. Just like anything else you need to be responsible when drinking coffee otherwise it can have negative side effects. People think that drinking coffee puts people in the hospital, but this is only when people drink much more than they should. Others also think that Coffee contains too many added ingredients that make it unhealthy, but there are options such as drinking coffee black that take away these unhealthy side effects. Lastly, some people think that coffee can have negative side effects on children. Children’s brains and bodies are still developing which is why most people shouldn't start drinking coffee until late in their teen years or even early twenties. Young adults and older should drink coffee, but do it responsibly by not adding sugar, waiting till you are old enough, and most importantly not over drinking. You will gain an enormous amount of benefits. These include, a decrease in risk of type two diabetes, Parkinson's, liver cancer, liver disease, and an increase in overall heart health, energy, fat burn, physical performance, essential nutrients, happiness, and antioxidants.   

Here are my sources if anyone wants to fact check me :)

"Ask the Experts: When Can Kids Start Drinking Coffee?" Healthily. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Nov.   2015. 

"Caffeine Overdose Symptoms: Signs, Cases, Prevention." Caffeine Overdose Symptoms: Signs,  Cases, Prevention. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Nov. 2015.

 Medical News Today. MediLexicon International, n.d. Web. 09 Nov. 2015. 

"Caffeine and Your Child." KidsHealth - the Web's Most Visited Site about Children's Health.   Ed. Jane M. Benton. The Nemours Foundation, 01 June 2014. Web. 09 Nov. 2015

 "13 Proven Health Benefits of Coffee (No. 1 Is My Favorite)." RSS 20. N.p., 25 Nov. 2013. Web.  09 Nov. 2015.