Coffee has a whole host of positive effects on our health. One of these positive effects is that drinking from one to five cups of coffee a day over the years is associated with a lower incidence of heart disease including rhythm problems and heart failure. Thus it may be surprising to learn that coffee can possibly raise your cholesterol level. What is this all abou?

What Are Diterpenes?

Many coffee lovers love using a French press to make their coffee. This method does not use a filter and allows for more antioxidants and natural oils to remain in your cup of coffee. However, one of the substances that remain in French press coffee as opposed to filtered coffee are diterpenes. Diterpenes help fight inflammation but they can also raise your cholesterol level. Specifically they raise low density and very low density cholesterol but can lower high density cholesterol. This can be a problem because the low density cholesterols are good for you and high density cholesterol is bad. It turns out that you can get a significant elevation of high density cholesterol levels with diterpenes.

Should You Avoid Using a French Press?

This question similar to whether you should avoid drinking coffee because the caffeine can raise your blood pressure. If you have a high cholesterol level and a family history of heart disease you probably want to avoid using a French press. You can talk to your doctor about this but better safe than sorry is probably a good path to take. If you have a low cholesterol and no significant family risk of heart disease you can probably use a French press and enjoy the extra flavor that comes with this method and not worry a lot. As with all health risks, talk to your doctor if you are concerned.

Advantages of Using a Coffee Filter

You can get rid of the cholesterol risk with coffee by using a filter which takes out the diterpenes. This also lowers coffee acidity and can make digestion better after drinking coffee with a meal. And this gets you back to the long term benefits for your heart of routine, daily coffee consumption, namely a reduced risk of arrhythmias and heart failure!

Health Advantages of Coffee Drinking

Whether you use a French press or not, you get a whole bunch of positive health effects including reduces chances of getting type II diabetes, various types of cancer, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and a generally longer and healthier life. So, as with many things in life you need to decide what sorts of risks there are and what sorts of benefits. In our humble opinion, drinking French press coffee in moderation if you are not being treated already for a high cholesterol would seem like a rational choice. The key part of this is the moderation and making sure that you have had your cholesterol checked to make certain that you are not starting out with a treatable cholesterol condition! Remember that no matter what the short term effects of coffee are, the long term results of coffee drinking are positive and provide good reason to enjoy your java every day.