Medical experts seem to disagree firmly and harshly over the question of whether coffee has health benefits. I just like the fact that when I have enough joe to function but not so much as to be jittery, I am in that sweet spot in which I am least likely to commit homicide.
But that right there is one of the reasons some doctors land in the Anti camp -- is getting hooked in a stimulant-dependent cycle really a sign of anything that's healthy? Didn't Patient Zero (me) just say he might murder someone unless he got coffee? Is it really any better than qat, the stimulant that everyone in Somalia apparently lives on?
The late P. J. O'Rourke in his classic All the Trouble in the World described his visit to Mogadishu in the 1990s. Somalia couldn't get any food into that pesthole of a country, but twenty planeloads of qat could somehow make it through from Kenya every day. "They start chewing before lunch but the high didn't kick in until about three in the afternoon. Suddenly our drivers would start to drive straight into potholes at full speed. Straight into pedestrians and livestock, too. We called it 'the qat hour.'" Is being addicted to coffee really any better than being addicted to qat?
Well, I hope so. I've been drinking coffee since I was a child but never got arrested for DWC (driving while caffeinated). The one time I really OD'd on caffeine it required a bunch of NoDoz, which rendered me not only awake and wired but also unable to sit still and do any of the schoolwork I had been planning to do, which is why I was jacked up in the first place. I've never gotten that bad on just coffee.
The anti-java squad has been at it a long time, as the Coffee Mill site breaks down for us. The Latter-day Saints frown on caffeine and nicotine. I've heard about attempts in the Catholic Church to ban it as a devil's brew from the Muslim world, but Pope Clement VIII supposedly tried it and liked it, and that was that.
I believe that story is probably not true, because if it were so, people like my wife would be calling him St. Clement.
Even many Muslims once considered coffee a fiendish drink, since it was not mentioned in the Koran, and yet they became its biggest Old World enthusiasts.
You may say, That just proves people like it, not that it's healthy. The fact that people will frown on it until they start chugging it reveals it is dangerously addictive, because it converts people as soon as they get that caffeine buzz!
I understand that -- and coffee was an acquired taste for me. I didn't become a fan because I thought it was delicious from that first sip. I had to keep at it, just as with beer and whiskey and cigarettes. That doesn't mean coffee's unhealthy -- Brussels sprouts and beets were acquired tastes for me, too. Red Bull, on the other hand, despite its caffeine has a taste I cannot acquire; however many times I've tried it, it still tastes like licking a high school lab table, or at least I suspect that's what it's supposed to taste like. Not a flavor found in nature.
But let's cede the point that there may be a downside to getting caught in that up-down stimulant wash cycle. Would it be better to have never had the noble bean at all? Less stressful on the heart, the brain, the delicate blood vessels?
Yeah. Maybe. The Mayo Clinic says coffee:
can temporarily raise blood pressure. Women who are pregnant, trying to become pregnant or breastfeeding need to be cautious about caffeine. High intake of boiled, unfiltered coffee has been associated with mild increase in cholesterol levels.
BUT! They also say:
Coffee may offer some protection against:
Parkinson's disease
Type 2 diabetes
Liver disease, including liver cancer
Heart attack and stroke
Some pretty serious study has shown that coffee can inhibit the replication of the hepatitis virus in the liver. So there!
I don't have much choice but to drink coffee at my house anyway. My wife is a strong believer in the Golden Rule and a humongous fan of the bean, and the best way she can think to do unto you what she would want done unto herself is to give you a cup of coffee. Bad day? Flat tire? Broke your leg? Have some coffee. That's just how we roll here. With a travel mug, of course.
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