Coffee facts that sellers won't tell. Benefit or harm?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Today it is difficult to imagine a person who does not know the taste of coffee. Fans of this drink around the world can not be counted. But the most popular drink on the planet has been the subject of fierce controversy for many years. The main questions are: is coffee harmful or healthy? Is it dangerous to drink it or not? How many cups can you drink without worrying about your health? etc.

In this video, we want to reveal to you some interesting facts about coffee, namely, about its real effect on our body.

There are many legends about where and when people first started drinking coffee, but most researchers are of the opinion that the invigorating effect of this drink was first noticed in Ethiopia. From there, coffee got to Yemen, and only then - to other parts of the world.

Coffee is obtained from the seeds of berries that grow on coffee trees. Today it is the second most popular drink in the world after tea. And, of course, it brings billions of currency to producers every year. And this is one of the main reasons why the end consumer, that is, you and I, know almost nothing about the many unpleasant and often even dangerous properties of coffee. And the first serious question on the agenda: What is natural coffee?

To be honest, only green coffee beans that have not yet undergone any heat treatment can be called natural. Because after roasting, a terrible chemical mixture of a variety of synthetic compounds is added to the natural ingredients. They are not in the original product. About a thousand of such substances have been described. Eight hundred of them are responsible for aroma, the rest for taste. But this is so, flowers.

The greatest danger is caused by the carcinogen acrylamide, which is also produced during the roasting process. For you to understand, the word "carcinogen" comes from the Latin word cancer, which means "cancer." And the darker the coffee beans, the more of this substance in them. Acrylamide is a mutagen. It affects cells and leads to mutations in the process of their division. Of course, it all depends on the dose, but we all have friends who don't get by with one or two cups a day. Another interesting topic: what causes the invigorating effect of coffee?

We often see in advertisements how a sleepy, tired person, after drinking a sip of coffee, immediately becomes full of strength and energy. But this is not the whole truth. Yes, the stimulating effect of coffee has been known for a long time. But coffee does not endow a person with any additional energy resources, but, on the contrary, depletes his emergency supply. Why? Let's understand this mechanism. Caffeine.

In medicine, this substance is known as the xanthine alkaloid. Its chemical formula looks like this. The caffeine content in a cup of coffee depends on many factors, on the type of coffee, on the processing, on the type of drink, on the number of spoons in the cup, and more.

First of all, caffeine stimulates the production of stress hormones: adrenaline, norepinephrine and cortisol. In natural conditions, when a life-threatening situation arises, they force our body to release hidden resources. This is necessary in order to survive, to be saved when something threatens us. With each additional cup of coffee, this process starts over and over again.

And it turns out that under the influence of stress hormones, the body "idle" consumes our own reserves, and does not take them from coffee. When stress hormones wear off, relaxation and loss of energy sets in, because the body has spent too much and now it takes time to recover.

This is one of the reasons why 25-30 minutes after the taken dose of coffee, the opposite effect often occurs - severe drowsiness. Another unpleasant effect of caffeine, associated with the so-called alertness, is that this alkaloid blocks the inhibitory mechanisms in our brain. Our brain has two main systems: the excitation system and the inhibition system.

Both of these systems contain so-called neurotransmitters, which are responsible for transmitting electrical and then chemical signals. And these same neurotransmitters are excitatory and inhibitory. One of the inhibitory neurotransmitters is called the adenosine transmitter.