Hey guys, Dr. Axe here. I'm founder of DrAxe.com, one of the largest
natural health websites in the world. One of the most common questions I've been
getting on my Facebook page as well as my webpage recently is, people have been asking
"Dr. Axe, is coffee good for me?" or "Is coffee good for you?" The answer is yes and no. There's a lot of research, actually, that's
been coming out on coffee and coffee is one of the most popular beverages around the world
today. But let me just first talk about why coffee
can be good for you and then also, why it can be bad for you. For starters, one of the biggest reasons why
coffee is beneficial is because it contains massive amounts of antioxidants. You know, one of the things that we're exposed
to all around the world today is large levels of toxicity. So antioxidants can really help and slow the
aging process, it can help protect yourselves against free radical damage. Coffee is actually one of the five highest
foods in antioxidants in the world today. So again, coffee, incredible in terms of its
antioxidants. Also, coffee increases circulation and can
stimulate the liver. So it actually has maybe some supportive benefits
for the liver. Increases circulation, it's been shown to
improve overall exercise. It's been shown to increase blood flow to
the brain. So for those reasons, because of the mass
amount of antioxidants and the increase in circulation, that's where the benefits of
coffee come from. Now, here are the negatives of coffee. The big thing is caffeine and consuming that
much caffeine can have a, kind of an addictive side effect as well as it can overstimulate
the body and it can burn out your adrenal glands and really over-tax your body. So that's the big negative. For a country in America and then across the
world, 80% of people will suffer with some form of fatigue or adrenal fatigue sometime
in their life. Because of that, if somebody is struggling
with fatigue on a regular basis or has thyroid issues, adrenal issues or hormonal issues,
for that reason I do not recommend those people consume coffee because of all of the caffeine
that you're going to find there. Again, that caffeine is really the main issue
with coffee is that it will burn out your adrenal glands. Think about this. Do you think you were created to rely on stimulants
all the time? That's really what caffeine is, it's a stimulant. So doing large amounts of caffeine is not
good at all for people with adrenal fatigue, thyroid problems or people with even autoimmune
disorders or other chronic illness, I do not recommend coffee for those people. But, if you're already generally healthy or
let's say you just struggle with some circulation issues or you're trying to support the brain
and you don't have autoimmune disease or any type of thyroid or adrenal issue. In that case, consuming coffee in moderate
amounts can be fine and even good for your health. Now, when you're consuming coffee, you need
to consume it in the morning or before lunch. Because what happens, if you start drinking
it in the afternoon or especially in the evening, the life of coffee and the caffeine and how
long it will affect your body can be around 12 hours. If you're consuming it in the afternoon, it
can definitely affect your sleep cycle that night. Not just you falling asleep, but your overall
quality of sleep while you're trying to sleep that night. So again, is coffee good? Is it bad? The truth is, coffee, it just really depends
on your body. It depends on if you have one of these conditions,
coffee can make it worse. Versus if you're looking for a little bit
of a pick me up, you're going to do it earlier in the day, you need more antioxidants and
circulation, for those reasons, coffee can have some of those major health benefits. And when buying coffee, here's the other thing. You must by organic, natural coffee if you're
going to consume it. Coffee is one of the most highly sprayed plants
in the entire world today and I think, really, a better option than coffee in general as
well is doing things like teas. Matcha green tea, an amazing superfood that
has about a third the amount of caffeine as coffee. Also, white tea, rooibos tea, oolong tea. These are good teas as well that you may consider
adding in and most of those have about one-third the amount of caffeine. So you could consume a couple cups a day and
you're actually going to be getting more benefits. So that's what I would recommend overall. If you want to, just get a little bit of caffeine
and support your organs as well, then again, switching over to tea is your best option. I know there's a lot of coffee lovers out
there. So again, if your body does well with coffee,
you do it earlier in the day and you do an organic brand, I think you're going to do
coffee. But for other people, doing some herbal teas
with some of those medicinal benefits is a better option. So this has been myself, Dr. Axe, answering
your question "Is coffee good for you?" The answer is yes and no.
