Healthy Coffee? 9 Surprising Health Benefits of Coffee

If you’re like most people, coffee is life. In fact, the average person drinks about 3 cups of coffee a day, making for 102 billion cups in America per year.

So how would you feel if you knew drinking coffee is good for you?

It’s true, you can now think of it as healthy coffee. Research has found there are several health benefits your morning cup of joe brings with it. Not only is it helping you to wake up, but it’s fighting off several diseases as well.

Let’s look at the 9 surprising health benefits of coffee.

1. Helps You Live Longer

If you always thought your morning cup of coffee was a little cup of magic, you may have another reason to think so. Studies show that coffee drinkers are more likely to live a longer life.

This claim stems from the number of diseases coffee helps prevent. And it doesn’t matter if it’s caffeinated coffee or if the drinker had one cup or eight. Everyone in the study gained from the benefits of coffee.

So pour yourself another cup, knowing you’re decreasing your risk of premature death. It gives your morning “lifesaving” cup of coffee a whole new meaning.

2. Lowers Risk of Parkinson’s Disease

Reaching for the caffeinated pot of coffee rather than the decaf can help lower your risk of developing Parkinson’s disease. In fact, it can lower your chances as much as 60%.

This could be due to the effect coffee has on your gut motility. When coffee increases gut motility, it creates an intestinal environment that fights Parkinson’s pathology.

Even people who already have Parkinson’s disease can benefit from coffee. It helps to control body movements that the disease may affect.

3. Aids in Weight Loss

Have you ever noticed that coffee is one of the first ingredients in most fat-burning supplements on the market? This is no coincidence. Coffee helps you burn fat and lose weight.

Sure, part of it is because coffee gives you added energy which helps you move more. But coffee also helps boost your metabolic rate. That helps you burn more calories both at rest and during activity.

Coffee is also a natural appetite suppressant. When you don’t feel hungry, you’ll eat less which also helps you lose weight.

4. It Protects Your Liver

You don’t hear about liver disease a lot, yet it’s one of the most common disease-related causes of death. What’s also worrying, many people who have it don’t even know. Which is why many call liver disease the “silent killer”.

Coffee can help keep your liver healthy. In fact, a daily cup of coffee can lower your risk of developing cirrhosis between 25-70% less than those who don’t drink it at all. It also helps prevent non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and hepatocellular liver cancer.

5. Lower Risk of Certain Cancers

Besides its great taste and magical properties to wake us up each morning, bet you didn’t know coffee also contains hundreds of protective biological compounds as well. These compounds help inhibit metastasis, block cellular damage, curb inflammation, and aid in DNA repair.

So what does all that mean? It means it helps you fight several different types of cancer! Among those cancers are breast, colorectal, liver, and prostate.

Since cancer is characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in the body, those protective compounds in coffee help to fight that off. Meaning you don’t have to feel guilty to use this coffee guide to decide on your next cup.

6. Helps for a Happy Heart

If all this talk about healthy coffee is making your heart happy, then you’re going to love what’s coming next. Coffee can actually make your heart healthy and happy!

Drinking three to five cups of coffee can help give you the lowest risks of cardiovascular disease. It’s also linked with lowering bad cholesterol while increasing the good.

And as a bonus (as if that wasn’t good enough), drinking even one cup of coffee a day can help prevent strokes.

7. Protects Against Type 2 Diabetes

A major health concern for many adults is type 2 diabetes. It elevates blood sugars, caused my either insulin resistance or a reduced ability to secrete insulin.

But studies have found that increasing your coffee intake by one cup a day can decrease your risk of developing type 2 by 11%. On the flip side of that, decreasing your coffee intake by the same amount only increases your risk by 17%.

To help up your prevention of type 2 diabetes, try to reduce the amount of sugar and fat your drink with your coffee.

8. Wards off Depression

If coffee makes you happy, it may not be a coincidence. That cup may be helping you fight off depression and be a happier person.

When drinking caffeinated coffee, a study found that the risk of depression decreased in women. The biggest decrease came when drinking more than four cups a day. But even two or three cups lowered the risk by 32%.

It’s important to note that this decreased risk wasn’t associated with any form of caffeine that was non-coffee related. So don’t feel guilty, reach for that caffeinated coffee with a smile!

9. Contains Essential Nutrients and Antioxidants

Did you know that coffee beans are rich in nutrients? Just a single cup of coffee can contain vitamin B2, vitamin B5, manganese, potassium, and vitamin B3.

While a single cup may only hold 2-11% of these nutrients, it’s still a big deal. Many people drink more than one cup a day, which means the nutrient levels only add up.

Plus, for those who only eat a Western diet, coffee may be your richest source of antioxidants. With its high levels of antioxidants, coffee can give more than fruits and vegetables combined.

That means coffee may be the healthiest thing you can drink!

Pour Another Cup of Healthy Coffee

Go ahead and grab a bigger mug! Now that you know the health benefits, having a cup of healthy coffee makes your morning even brighter.

Looking for more health advice? Be sure to check out the other articles on our Health blog!