Are you a night owl or a morning bird? I, for one, cannot comprehend the thought of getting up at 6 am naturally and having my circadian rhythm so intact that I have the urge to go for a run when the sun isn’t even up yet. I’d much rather be in the comfort of my bed staring wide-eyed at a screen running episode after episode of a show Netflix urged me to watch — which is an occurrence I am sure happens to most of us nowadays. But, unfortunately, we cannot all live in the dream scenario of staying up all night and miraculously feeling decent in the early morning for school, work or whatever pulls us out of our sheets and shoves us into society. Now, that’s where a simple fix comes in: a morning beverage that has shaped the way we view mornings in the modern age.
History.
The origin of coffee is still debated with strings of legends and myths pointing at which country first founded the ancient bean. Coffee grown around the globe today has been traced back centuries to coffee forests in Ethiopia, then moving east to the Arabian peninsula where it was first cultivated and traded. Here, its popularity grew from being enjoyed in households to essentially constructing coffee houses in hopes of creating a shared space of music, conversations, and performers — much like our local cafés down the street. And through world domination, coffee competed with beer and wine to be the most popular drink in the 17th century; even grabbing the attention of the Catholic Church and Pope Clement VIII.
Science.
Jumping from the 17th to the 21st century, it seems that coffee still has a cultural impact internationally but at a more personal level. Chances are you have a coffee maker, such as Keurig or Nespresso, at home or in your workplace. The accessibility and reliability of coffee have only grown with the boom of the corporate and student lifestyles, where productivity is the essence of being successful. With the 9 to 5 job, it is important to have a high-level of performance throughout the day, with which coffee has been known to help. A study carried out by Ryan et al. in 2002 highlights caffeine’s aid of memory performance, which is thought to be dependent on the time of day. The results suggest that “participants who ingested decaffeinated coffee showed a significant decline in memory performance from morning to afternoon” whereas, “those who ingested coffee showed no decline in performance”. Even the sheer thought of consuming caffeine has shown improvements in reaction times in a placebo study carried out by Anderson and Horne (2008). In this study, participants had a sleep restriction the previous night and were given decaffeinated coffee in two sessions: one where participants were verbally told that the coffee was caffeinated (served as the placebo) and one under neutral priming (served as the control). The results show that “there were significantly fewer lapses and shorter reaction times following the placebo”, thus, “indicating that suggesting about consuming caffeine was effective in improving performance in moderately sleepy people.” It seems that the influence of coffee and how we as humans think of it has passed down generations into our subconscious minds, and just looking at this standpoint paints a picture of the coffee bean being a miraculous wonder we all take for granted. But, how does it measure up to our health?
Over the last decade, scientific studies have shown opposing views of coffee and its impact on our health. On one side, more and more studies have suggested the benefits of coffee consumption, such as:
A study by Ludwig et al. (2014) linking the biochemistry of coffee to potential impacts on health such as the prevention of chronic and degenerative diseases like cancer, diabetes and more.
Klatsku et al. (2006) concluded that the data they found supports the hypothesis that there is an ingredient in coffee that protects humans against cirrhosis (scarring of the liver caused by liver diseases), particularly alcohol cirrhosis.
A Harvard study by Lucas et al. (2011) investigated the relationship caffeinated coffee consumption and depression among women in a longitudinal study. The study published that women who consumed 4 or more cups of caffeinated coffee had a 20% lower risk of becoming depressed.
However, there have been findings to also suggest coffee’s impact on heart health and blood pressure. Even without scientific studies, I have found that coffee does make me more aware of my heart pounding faster. Higdon and Frei (2006) reviewed human research on coffee’s health impacts and confirmed that coffee consumption is associated with increases in cardiovascular disease risk factors such as blood pressure and plasma homocysteine (an amino acid in the blood, where high levels are associated with heart disease). But, many studies that have shown a correlation between cardiovascular activity and coffee have ruled similar results: that caffeine indulgence will not be a long-term health issue if consumed in moderation. This raises the question of ‘how much caffeine is just too much?’. Much like other stimulants, the consumption rate is the key to avoiding adverse reactions. Professor Hyppönnen of the University of South Australia stated: “In order to maintain a healthy heart and a healthy blood pressure, people must limit their coffees to fewer than six cups a day — based on our data six was the tipping point where caffeine started to negatively affect cardiovascular risk.” Drinking six cups does seem like an awful lot of coffee to consume a day, which is great news for all the coffee lovers out there! Thankfully, enjoying a cup o’ joe every morning does not result in long-term health risks and may be beneficial to our bodies.
Personal Importance.
Setting the science aside, I’d say that the cultural influence of coffee outweighs people’s need to drink it for health benefits. At least for me, there is a sensory association I have with coffee and my upbringing; getting to smell the fresh brew of a Nespresso Fortisso Lungo capsule early on a Sunday as my parents wake up, to waiting in the morning rush of my local Tim Hortons inevitably making me late to first period Math. The mere picture of a cup of coffee has so many references in marking places and things I’ve seen, from the café-lined streets of Paris in the summer, to the Starbucks vanilla sweet cold brew I tried last weekend (which is an amazing drink, might I add). Maybe T.S. Eliot was right in saying:
“For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;”
from the poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” I studied in my grade 12 English class. It is so interesting to see a commonality in a beverage that is available to almost all of us — a kind of time staple we humans like to hold onto, almost as if it is nostalgic for everyone. A single waft of a nicely brewed fresh jug of coffee would almost immediately bring me back to a sip I had in the last year, month or week. I believe that that is what we love so much about it… of course apart from giving us the much-needed push through the cycle of days ahead.
