Drink Coffee-Die Early -Roger Mason

This column has covered coffee drinking before, and some of the many reasons you should not drink it. You can tolerate 2 or 3 cups a week if you like, but the ideal, of course, is none at all. Coffee is an American institution, as we all know. We are drinking record amounts of the stuff for some reason. Coffee is damned addictive. This column has suggested occasional use of the "lesser evils" of guarana and yerba mate teas to kick this addiction. These are not South America "health tonics", as the promoters will tell you. They are merely less toxic and harmful than coffee, and don't make you hungry (be sure to read "Is Coffee Making You Fat?" in our library). Coffee will often increase your appetite after a few hours. It can  also cause you to choose higher fat and higher sugar foods. Many people just don't realize their coffee habits are causing them to eat more and gain weight.  
 
A study was done at the famous Wageningen Centre for Food Science in the Netherlands with real people drinking coffee (Am. J. Clin. Nutr. vol. 76, 2003). The researchers found that drinking ANY kind of coffee raised the patients homocysteine levels. Filtered coffee is less harmful than French press or boiled, but still raises homocysteine strongly. It's not just the caffeine, but also the alkaloids cafestol and kahweol that are so toxic. Homocysteine is an excellent marker for heart health. (Please see our library for more on homocysteine). Plain caffeine capsules also raised homocysteine, but to a definitely lesser degree. There is no point in drinking decaffeinated coffee, since the whole reason for drinking it is to give you energy and a mild euphoria. You still get half the harmful ingredients in decaf coffee- it's not just the caffeine here that is killing you. Coffee sure does make you feel great for a few hours- at a very high cost.  
 
At the equally famous Karolinska Institute in Sweden (New England Journal of Medicine January 2001) 1,515 women were studied for their coffee consumption. The more coffee they drank, the more miscarriages they had. Drinking just four cups a day DOUBLED the miscarriage rate. Drink coffee and kill your unborn baby. At the National Institute of Public Health in Finland in 2000 7,000 Finns were studied for their coffee consumption. The more coffee they drank the more arthritis they got. We could go on here. 
 
Many people take toxic, ineffective, dangerous arthritis drugs and wash them down with a good hot cup of coffee! 95% of Americans over the age of 65 get arthritis, but you can be the 5% who doesn't. Read Treating Bone & Joint Problems Naturally in our library. 
 
High blood pressure is another epidemic due, in part, to coffee. At the University of Oklahoma (American Journal of Hypertension May 2000) young healthy men raised both their blood pressure and cortisol levels (the stress hormone). Coffee is known to interfere with good sleep and normal sleep patterns.  There are many other proven detrimental effects from regular coffee consumption. 
 
Now, imagine the person who drinks several cups of coffee every day. They increase their chances of premature death from some form of heart and artery condition. They have cut their life short as well as the quality of their life. Coffee is insidious stuff folks. An occasional cup is fine, but how many people limit their coffee like that?