Tanya’s Tasty Tips: Is Caffeine Helpful or Harmful?
Caffeine has become a necessity for all different types of individuals. Whether jump starting your day, staying late night hours at work or just going about your typical day, everyone seems to rely on caffeine in this fast-pasted society we live in. Although in the past, caffeine has gotten a bad rap; recent studies show that caffeine may actually be good for you.
Caffeine is a drug that is naturally produced in the leaves and seeds of many plants. Caffeine is defined as a drug because it stimulates the central nervous system, causing increased alertness. Most experts agree that moderation and common sense are the keys for eating or drinking caffeine-containing products. Moderate caffeine consumption is considered to be about 300 mg, which is equal to 3 cups of coffee.
Here are some surprising health benefits of caffeine:
• Mental Performance: If you are falling asleep and need a boost caffeine can definitely help you.
• Mood: Studies have shown that when people consume caffeine, they felt an increased well being, happiness, energy and sociability.
• Physical Performance: Caffeine helps the body burn fat instead of carbohydrate and dulls the perception of pain, which can both boost endurance.
• Headaches: Most headache medications include caffeine. When you get a headache the blood vessels in your brain expand; caffeine causes blood vessels to constrict which helps relieve pain.
• Diseases: Caffeine has been said to protect against gallstones by showing that caffeine can reduce the size of the crystallized stones. Caffeine can also protect against Parkinson’s disease. This disease results when levels of the brain chemical, dopamine fall, interrupting nerve signals from the brain to muscles. caffeine increases the expression of dopamine receptors in the brain
• Antioxidants: Many caffeine-containing beverages, most notably tea and more recently coffee, have been found to contain antioxidants. Antioxidants have been known to help prevent heart disease and cancer.
Due to the ever growing consumption of caffeine, manufacturers have been producing more products containing caffeine in them. So if you’re not a coffee addict, here are some surprising boosts of caffeine:
• Edys Grand Espresso Chip Ice cream,(4 oz.) 45mg
• Haagen-Daas Mocha chip, regular or light, (4 oz.) 30-40mg
• Crackheads Candy,(1 package)120mg
• Hershey’s Special Dark Chocolate Bar, 20mg
• Sumseeds Sunflower seeds,(1 container)140mg
• Swiss Miss Mocha Cappuccino,(1 packet) 25,mg
• chocolate milk,(8 oz.) 2-7mg
• Mountain Dew,(12 oz) 54mg
• Red Bull, (8 oz.) 80mg
Tanya Zuckerbrot, MS, RD is a nutritionist and the creator of The F-Factor Diet™, an innovative nutritional program she has used for more than ten years to provide hundreds of her clients with all the tools they need to achieve easy weight loss and maintenance, improved health and well-being. For more information log onto www.FFactorDiet.com.
Tags: caffeine, chocolate, mocha, red bull, Tanya Zuckerbrot
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Recently a group of older women took part in a blind study, 1/2 were given a cup of coffee, and the other 1/2; none was given, then both groups tested. Coffee drinkers out performanced those w/o . I know my AM headaches always disappear- and now thanks to Tanya, I know why! Mocha coffees made using 2 tblspns of Hershey’s choclate drink mix (adds vitamins too!). Really good coffee tastes like choclate, though, like Dunkin Doughnuts’!
I go back and forth with coffee/caffeine. I was heavy user in college, and then would stop during the summer. When I don’t drink caffeine in the morning, I get a MASSIVE headache in the afternoon. Nothing makes it go away, not aspirin or even caffeine, except to take 75 mg of diphenhydramine and take a nap. It takes about 3 days to get the effects of caffeine out of my system, or until I have more caffeine when I wake up. I have to have the caffeine before the headache kicks in, or else it’s too late. This all tells me that maybe it’s NOT so good for me? It’s almost impossible to avoid caffeine, though, so I’m back on it now, in a diet drink that I have every morning. I know I certainly sleep better at night when I’m off the caffeine, but I’m not as alert in the morning, either.
The downside of caffeine is that it can occasionally collect in the body making you worry unnecessarily. In my case it settled in my right breast and made the breast noticably larger than my left. After a couple years of wondering what it was, I finally went to the doctor. They sent me for a mammogram – and guys, that hurts! Anyway, it turned out it was just caffeine deposits and I was told not to worry about it. In this past year I have had almost no caffeine from pop, tea, etc but there has been no decrease in size. As a child I would have typically have tea during the summer but never any pop. As an adult I typically had a pop or two per day in my 20s and 30s. I’m not sure that it will have the same affect on other people or if the affect is different for men vs women.
I’m a regular caffeine user. I drink several diet sodas each day. However, I’m at a point where I feel that it just can’t be good for me to consume as much as I do. What are the potential effects of overconsumption?