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Is coffee healthy, just ok, or poisonous?

Coffee has been innocently enjoyed since the 15^th century starting in North Africa and Egypt. People knew about its caffeine affects and when coffee reached Greece, the Greek Orthodox monks used to drink it before going to church as they said the high feeling from the caffeine made them feel closer to God!

Its ability to keep people awake and get a psychological boost may have been why people first started drinking coffee, but since then science has occasionally looked into the affects of coffee. The reports tell us how coffee helps prevent Type II diabetes, Parkinson's, colon cancer, cirrhosis, gall stones, depression,  helps digestion as it increases the release of stomach acid, increases muscle strength (athletes drink a cup before competing), and we all can confess that it gives us a warm romantic feeling (especially if milk is added!).

So why not drink as much coffee as possible! I know a lot of people who do! Well here are a few reasons...

In the year 2002, new research in Sweden brought out some of the risks from drinking coffee. Starches heated over 120 degrees Celsius contain acrylamides (the higher the temperature the more acrylamides) and as coffee is normally baked till the beans are black temperatures up to 400 degrees Celsius are used, in other words where it was found that coffee contains high levels of acrylamides because this chemical was produced in the baking process that makes coffee beans go from green to black.

Acrylamides are harmful to your body. They increase various cancer risks, cause muscle weakness and numbness, nerve damage, and other effects. It is strange that although many people know how acrylamides are found on starches like bread, French fries, deep fried foods, and crackers, foods that are cooked at temperatures above 120C (the temperature of steaming) yet few people realize that coffee is major source of acrylamides, and considering how much coffee people drink these days might just be the major source of acrylamide poisoning in modern diets!

Acrylamides are a good enough reason to avoid coffee, but coffee has a lot of other nasty ingredients as well. It has caffeine which, like acrylamides has been proven to cause a low level of inflammation in the body that if continued for many years' leads to heart disease and other health problems. Caffeine stimulates the central nervous system, increases stress hormones in the blood streams, and makes you feel unnaturally alert; however tends to prevent you from relaxing. This causes your stress levels to increase! Do you really want more stress?

The caffeine also induces a 24 hour cyclic disturbance in your body so your sleep quality will be reduced. If you drink coffee in the morning, you will find heavy fatigue sets in by late afternoon and if you keep drinking more coffee to recover, you will feel exhausted by the evening. Caffeine causes irritability, fatigue, and in general creates an uncomfortable feeling in your body. It's also addictive so every morning you get up tired and so can't wait to have another cup. Once you are on this cycle you end up with dark circles under your eyes, constant fatigue, and suffer from an acid stomach.

Well, acrylamides and caffeine are pretty bad, but coffee also contains pesticides, unless proven to be organic, and this is because most coffee beans are not washed off before baking to maximize the coffee flavor in the beans. In order to keep up with the huge world demand for coffee, pesticides must be used. We all know how deadly and cancer causing pesticides are, so remember that the more coffee you drink, the more pesticides go in to your body.

Besides acrylamides, caffeine, and pesticides, coffee also contains Furan, another carcinogenic toxin famous for causing liver cancer. Furan was recently in the news after it was found how processed and foods cooked at high temperatures contained this carcinogen. The main source of Furan in the western diet is from, guess what? Coffee.

If acrylamides, caffeine, pesticides, and Furan is not bad enough for you, a lot of coffee also contains a fungus mycotoxin which include a lot of side effects including:  Headaches - memory loss - problems focusing or concentrating - chronic fatigue - nose and throat irritation - persistent cold-like symptoms - burning, itching or watering eyes - dizziness - nausea - tremors - heart palpitations - shortness of breath (during mild exertion) - exhaustion- after routine activity - serious swelling in legs, ankles, feet - serious swelling in torso or stomach -  prolonged muscle cramps and joint pain - sensitivity to odors - cancer - women who are pregnant could experience multiple problems, even miscarriages. How much mycotoxin is in the coffee you drink? No way to tell other than see if there are any side affects…about a cup of coffee now?

With acrylamide, caffeine, furan, and mycotoxin poison in a cup of coffee, you probably think nothing more could be wrong with coffee. Well, there is more. Coffee especially instant coffee contains the toxic heavy mineral cadmium that can cause kidney problems, is related to high blood pressure and heart disease, and can cause lung and prostate cancer. Cadmium competes with zinc in the body so makes us unable to use zinc. What is the result? Zinc is one of the main weapons of our immune system and important to keep a healthy prostate for men. Without it we get serious immune system weakness, swollen prostate, and of course weak immune system leaves us open to other disease!

So, is drinking coffee safe? Well let's not forget that we have an immune system that can fight against the negative effects of coffee. The question is how much coffee can your body handle? Well, the answer is related to how much stress you are under, how much you exercise, how good your nutritional levels are, how much sleep you get, how happy you are, whether you have some other health problem, and many other things that affect the strength of your immune system.

I thought of a way to show how much coffee you can drink. Let's make a health scale from 1 to 10. If you are at 8, which means you are really healthy, happy, get plenty of exercise, have no on-going health problem, rarely feel tired, and feel strong everyday, you can drink about one cup of coffee a week!

If you are like most so called healthy people, where you are not sick but feel tired most of the time, get little exercise and have a lot of stress, you might as well give up coffee. Improve your lifestyle and then, maybe, you can enjoy a cup of coffee once in awhile. In the meantime, prefer to drink tea and especially green tea.

There is also another solution: drink low temperature coffee. In Greece and other Mediterranean countries, it is possible to choose coffee that is only slightly roasted, cooked at about 25% less heat used to make normal black coffee and so looks light brown after its baked, like the color of milk chocolate, and with a flavor really similar to chocolate!

This low acrylamide coffee has other benefits too. Firstly, due to being cooked at low temperatures it is also low in Furan. Secondly, the beans chosen are from special coffee beans that contain only half the caffeine of other types of coffee. Thirdly, by using organic coffee beans and or by treating the raw coffee beans with ozone before baking you can eliminate the pesticides.

The result? You get to continue the pleasure of coffee while minimizing the stress on your immune system. Don’t forget the people of Greece are amongst the longest living in the world yet drink coffee everyday!

If the above information is not enough to make you either quit coffee or switch to Greek coffee there is one more thing special about Greek coffee… it can be used for coffee reading! After each cup you just turn the coffee cup over and let the coffee powder pour out and dry. Then, with a little imagination and a few lessons from me on how to read the coffee, you can answer all sorts of questions about your life, and the future!

Sound good? Join a coffee reading party soon and try a cup for yourself!   

Remember, health is the foundation from which you can do everything else in life. Take steps everyday to minimize your risks and improve your chances to stay healthy!