There are lots of reasons why drinking coffee is good for you. But as the experts at Johns Hopkins and the Mayo Clinic remind us, coffee should be consumed in the right amount! The good part is that coffee consumption reduces the risks of type II diabetes, various kinds of cancer, Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease, liver disease, heart disease, and strokes. You can even live longer by drinking coffee! But you need to drink enough coffee to make a difference without going overboard and avoid drinking too much and experiencing problems related to too much coffee.
How Much Coffee Do You Need to Drink to Get It’s Benefits?
Long term studies that have asked people about their coffee consumption along with other health issues indicate that if one consumes a cup of coffee a day on average that benefits occur. These benefits generally increase with consumption up to a limit of about six cups of coffee a day and then plateau. Thus there are lower and upper limits to coffee consumption in order to get its benefits.
How Much Coffee Is Too Much for the Average Person?
Both Johns Hopkins and Mayo advise coffee drinkers to beware of drinking too much coffee. Here are there are two categories, men and women who are not pregnant or nursing are one group and the other is women who are pregnant or nursing. For the first group side effects include a faster heart rate, elevation of blood pressure, jitteriness and anxiety, and difficulty getting to sleep. Most folks in the first group can drink coffee containing up to 400 mg of caffeine per day. That works out to about three cups of coffee, depending on the type. Robusta has a higher caffeine content than great tasting arabica from places like Colombia. The average eight ounce cup of arabica contains 95 mg.
How Much Coffee Is Too Much If You Are Pregnant?
Because coffee health issue for mom and baby typically have to do with caffeine, drinking decaf may be a good choice. In general, decaf coffee has the same health benefits as regular coffee. The Mayo Clinic reminds us that how much coffee is too much needs to include “energy drinks with caffeine.” These drinks to not come with the health benefits of coffee but can produce the same or worse side effects.
As general rule pregnant women should limit their coffee intake such that they get less than 200 mg of caffeine a day or half the usual recommended amount. This is according to the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Observed effects of excessive caffeine intake during pregnancy include stillbirth, preterm birth, low birth weight, and restrict fetal growth. One of the issue here is that caffeine clearance from a woman’s body seems to be slowed or reduced during pregnancy.
How Much Coffee is Too Much if You Are Nursing?
The rule of thumb for coffee consumption for nursing moms is similar to that during pregnancy. Keep coffee consumption low enough that daily caffeine intake is 200mg a day or less. The issue is not so much for mom in this case but for baby who gets caffeine through breast milk. Although the amount of caffeine that a nursing baby gets is pretty small, baby does not have mature kidneys and cannot clear caffeine out its system as effectively and rapidly as an adult can.
The measure of how fast the body rids itself of a substance is called the half-life. In other words, how long does it take for the body to reduce the level of caffeine in the blood by a half? Men and women both have caffeine half-lives of about five hours. The half-life of caffeine in a newborn baby is about one hundred hours and much longer for premature babies. Thus, when mom is nursing a newborn and especially a premature newborn the baby’s caffeine level will steadily rise even with tiny amounts of coffee. Thus baby is jittery, cries a lot, does not sleep well. When levels get really high baby will experience tremors, agitation, hypertonia or muscle weakness, and the sort of “tonic-clonic” movements typical of seizures.
The bottom line is please talk to your doctor about caffeine intake when nursing, especially with premature newborns!