Coffee and Artery Function

The new dietary guidelines for beverages recommend tea and coffee second only to water in healthfulness, but what about concerns they might impair the function of our endothelium?

I’m fascinated by how complicated such a simple question can get. The take-home is that water is the healthiest beverage, followed by tea.

The effects of coffee on cancer risk are more salutary:

It also matters what goes into the coffee. A new video next week on aspartame and brain function will explore the potential benefits of coffee in reducing suicide risk that may be undermined by the addition of artificial sweeteners.

Image Credit: GoToVan via Flickr.

[hunwarrior]

I was always a big coffee drinker, until last year...
I started experiencing pain and numbness in my hands. It got to a point it would wake me up in the middle of the night, feeling like my hands were on fire.
I follow a healthy vegan lifestyle, so I knew immediately what was causing it...my 2-3 cups of coffee a day.
I switched to decaf, no improvement, then I went cold turkey. Which was super hard....
The pain was completely gone in a week, and have been enjoying teas nowadays. :-)

[mareklhotak]

Wow! Super interesting!!!! Thanks so much for researching &

[wkclark]

It never stated what kind of coffee was used in the study, its known that coffee beans/plants are heavily sprayed with pesticides, organic coffee is not.

[skeli]

what about drinking coffee/tea with plant-'milk'?

[brown]

I knew this was a gamble sitting here drinking my dunkin coffee and clicking on this haha. I've needed an excuse to switch to tea so I guess this is as good of a time as any. Thanks Doc!

[XChan]

Only problem with people just go to the store and buy any tea without a thought. Or they may go to a pricier speciality tea store and buy any tea without a thought. The problem, is that most tea in stores, both chain stores and speciality stores, comes from China, which at one time was undoubtedly a great place to acquire tea from (maybe 19th century and before), now is being grown in questionably clean air and soil, and sprayed with a ton of pesticides. The soil due to pollution can contain much more lead than naturally should be present, and even tea bags can contain chemicals. Tea i agree is fantastic, but to get more good from it than harm, I think that we need to at the very least be drinking organic tea that uses untreated bags (some brands being Numi, Yogi, and Traditional Medicinals), and if possible, find tea grown in another country. I have nothing against China per se, but it has been their choice to bring extreme air and soil pollution into their country via industry. The other thing i'd recommend NOT getting from China that often comes from there, is herbal supplements. I don't take those anyway, but much of the "health" suppliments you'd buy in your local supplement/vitamin chain store, source their herbs and spices and vegetables from China. So yes, tea, and herbs, and vegetables are great, but in today's 21st century polluted world, you really have to pay close attention to the source of all things, not just the general proven health benefit of that thing.

[JD-]

Some should research the endothelial effects of freshly roasted coffee (no more than 4 days old before being ground). I think that the week or month old coffee is so oxidized that all of the salubrious compounds are gone potentially making typical store bought coffee to be deleterious to vessels. Is there any research like this out there???

[markbrad]

Stopping Coffee makes me a lot calmer but I seem to lose all drive and motivation.

[chryslercartography]

Interesting research on different aspects of tea and coffee use.

[tdreamgmail]

What about almond milk or coconut milk with tea?

[rebirth]

Watching this video, I felt as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.

[Haminette]

Most green tea available in the United States contain High Fructose Corn Syrup (reduces I.Q., causes obesity, causes/worsens liver damage, and is more potent than other sugars while I'm Diabetic), beyond 30g of sugar (you're not supposed to consume that much sugar in a day, let alone in one serving paired with caffeine - & I'm Diabetic), orange (to which I'm allergic), and/or honey (while I am a vegan). So, while I love green tea, and want it in my diet, I haven't been able to drink it much at all in two years. The only option available comes from China, and thus is probably contaminated with pollutants, and possibly radiation from Fukushima if carried over by the weather (China does most of it's agriculture along the coast, increasing the risk of Fukushima contamination heavily (the pollution from all of the agriculture, and mines China has along almost it's entire coast is insane, and explains how they killed off the marine biology save for a species of jellyfish)).
Also, my brother "accidentally" broke my tea kettle, so I can no longer have that one possible green tea choice from China.

I saw that Snapple, and some other brand I don't recall the name of have more sugar per serving than you're supposed to consume in a day. One of those babies would kill me. My guess is that there's a hidden death tally from these drinks from the Type II Diabetes they probably cause in people healthy prior to getting into regularly drinking these, and from the deaths of Diabetics that surely must be happening from these allegedly healthy drinks, some of which TEAS we don't expect to have such problems, thus Diabetics are surely drinking those products, and dying from it. Heck, I almost did that on the 11th, but thankfully remembered to check the sugar while I was checking the ingredients for HFCS, and anything non-vegan.
The other brand was over 40g of sugar per serving, in each product, and contained HFCS. Then, the Snapples just said sugar, and contained over 30g per serving per product.
But, I guess these businesses are owned by groups "too big to jail, " and "too big to fail, " whom are far too rich to do much to with lawsuits even despite they can't actually win against those suing them.
These companies should be taken out of business, with all staff guilty of involvement in knowing about this problem, yet not doing anything about it, charged with homicide, and executed.

[MatthewMartinDean]

Tomorrow I'm going to hedge my bets and make a Spreeze (Coffee mixed with tea)

[Abc-qsir]

What about organic paper filtered coffee??? ☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️

[ShuggaMug]

There's no mention about the tested coffee being organic or not. Non-organic coffee is very high in pesticides so shouldn't those toxic additives be taken into account? I'm hopping the organic coffee I enjoy every morning is healthier than this particular study demonstrates.

[TheSnerggly]

I love the taste and smell of coffee, I use soy creamer and no sugar and only drink 8 ounces a day. I used to drink up to 24 ounces but cut back due to the affect on my body once I changed my diet.

[feriwarlock]

Interestingly, after years of tea drinking (both black and green) I have started drinking coffee a few times a week. Just one cup in the morning with a teaspoon of sugar or honey and soy creamer. My HDL has actually gone up a few points. It was already good in the mid 50s for a male and now it is 61. I have to wonder if it is from my minimal consumption of coffee?

[PrimaryBandit]

Seems like a minor effect compared to more significant changes in diet. There should be some metric in your videos which shows how significant of a lifestyle change going from coffee to tea is compared to eliminating milk from the diet for example. I'm guessing the coffee effect on the endothelium is moot compared to eliminating meat and dairy.

[peepmatts]

So i am drinking coffee from a french press and eating some of the grains I will be ok? Filtered coffee ok? Confusing data.

[MikoVanara]

Good to know, I tried switching to black tea a while back and then went back to coffee for some reason.. I'll have to switch back again..