The Surprising Benefits of Coffee: Heart Health, Metabolism, and More

Can coffee really improve your heart health and help manage your waistline? You might be surprised by the answer! In this episode of Health and Fitness Redefined, I, Anthony Amen, delve into a groundbreaking study involving over 15,000 participants that reveals a fascinating correlation between coffee consumption and overall metabolic health. From lower LDL levels to enhanced insulin response, this episode uncovers why your favorite morning brew might be doing more for your body than you ever imagined.

Additionally, understand the nuances of your coffee choice—why a cup from Starbucks might feel more addictive than one from Dunkin' Donuts, and how the caffeine content is influenced by factors like bean type and brewing method. Learn about the hidden calories that can sneak into your coffee through various additives and transform it from a low-calorie drink into a high-calorie indulgence. Whether you're a casual sipper or a coffee aficionado, this episode is packed with insights to help you make informed choices about your beloved beverage.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Health and Fitness Redefined. I'm your host, anthony Amen, and today we're going to talk about an awesome substance. That substance is one of my favorite things in the entire world that I constantly consume and wish I had more of right now but it's late when I'm doing this is coffee. Yes, coffee, the thing that keeps me going, and just so much more about this beautiful black substance that we all consume is amazing. So why coffee? Well, it is always a topic of concern when I'm talking to my clients as far as weight loss is it healthy, how much is too much, et cetera, et cetera. And just today I'm sitting looking at things like huh, what's a fun conversation to do about for this next topic? And you know what popped Study on coffee and I was like that's it, we have yet to really talk about this.

Speaker 1: 1:14

So let's talk about a cross-sectional study that was performed with over 15,000 participants about whether or not coffee intake was related to overall metabolic health. So they broke it off into those that have zero cups, those that one, two, three and four plus, and the results don't really shock me, but I think it's going to shock a lot of people. Coffee, especially the greater amounts have been associated with, especially the greater amounts have been associated with higher I mean sorry, lower LDLs, and LDLs are low-density lipids if you listen to that macro segment. So, yay, lower BMI, yay, better cardiovascular health. So less markers for cardiovascular diseases, and I think that's the most shocking. So a lot of people think it's bad for your heart and it's not. The other thing was obesity markers and then your reaction to insulin. So those it had a positive correlation, meaning your body is better to respond with insulin when you intake sugar than not taking coffee. And that was up to that was including the higher groups. So the four plus groups were getting more results out of this than those non-coffee drinkers. That's amazing, and who's excited about that? I know? Come on, let's hear it.

Speaker 1: 2:39

What kind of coffee you guys like? All right, now I wanna talk a little bit about coffee and different things that can be related. So, first and foremost, coffee and the amount of caffeine found inside. Coffee is basically really dependent on how it's brewed. The type of beans that are used and where the beans come from. Like depending on where they're grown will determine the acidity levels of the beans and all that kind of fun stuff and especially how it's brewed and where it comes from. So I so dark roast has less caffeine than light roast, so having light roast coffee is always going to have higher caffeine intake than that of the dark roast. So that's the first thing. That's very interesting.

Speaker 1: 3:22

Another interesting tidbit a lot of people do not know Starbucks. I know a lot of you go to Starbucks, myself included, once in a while. Nothing wrong with it. Well, starbucks actually is addicting, and if you look into it you can fact check me on this and you'll see that I'm right Because they purposely use beans and brew their coffee so it has greater amounts of caffeine as opposed to other coffee places such as a Dunkin' Donuts or a 7-Eleven other coffee places such as a Dunkin' Donuts or a 7-Eleven. So that's why, when you're used to drinking Starbucks and you have a Dunkin', oh, it's not the same. It's not the same because there's less caffeine inside the Dunkin' Donuts than there's that of a Starbucks, which is why you're craving more. But this is how they create a successful company. It basically got you addicted to caffeine without you realizing it, and you keep going back there because it gives you the highest amount of caffeine per ounce that you're drinking for your coffee. Bet, you didn't know that.

Speaker 1: 4:20

The other thing was how as far as health like how you make your coffee and I don't mean that as since how you're brewing it, it's what are you putting in it, right? So a cup of coffee is anywhere between five to 10 calories, black and a cup. What is a cup of coffee? A cup of coffee is typically 5.5 ounces, so not your typical giant 12 ounce cup. That is not a cup just because it's in a cup. If it's in a tumbler, that's 32 ounces, it does not count as one cup. So, no, it's about five to five and a half ounces. As far as what actually is a cup of coffee. And where was I going with this? Oh yeah, so what you're putting in it for calorie perspective, when you start adding milk and you start adding sugars, you start increasing the caloric intake of that coffee. So a lot of people putting two sugars and some milk can actually bump that caloric intake up to about 150 calories, right? So now you're taking something that's five to 15 calories and bumping it up to 150 calories and now you're having one of those over the course of seven days. So we talked about in the WTF macro.

Speaker 1: 5:29

I highly recommend you guys look at that episode super in detail about how 3,500 calories is equivalent to one pound of fat. If I'm bumping my coffee up, 150 calories times that by seven, because it's seven days in a week seven times 100 is 700, seven times five is 35, so 350, so 1,050 calories extra you're consuming per week. Meaning over the course of three weeks roughly three, three and a half weeks you're going to gain a pound of fat if you don't change anything else. Now take that back to Starbucks Frappuccinos. Those can have up to 400 to 500 calories jam-packed in them. Yet again, if it's 500 calories times that by seven 3,500 calories there's a pound of fat you're gaining and you've honestly negated every positive effect from coffee period.

Speaker 1: 6:23

Anthony, I can't drink coffee black. It's horrible. Slowly wean down right. If you use four packs of sugar, next time try three and a half. Do that for five days. After doing that for five days, pump it down to three. Do that for five days. Slowly, gradually, you'll start getting more used to black coffee. And even if you end up with just a half a pack of sugar, that's way better than where you were at three and a half or four packs of sugar. And please stay away from frappuccinos. They're atrocious for you, right? No, great. So there we go.

Speaker 1: 6:56

We talked about why some people are not seeing the positive effects of coffee because they're adding all XYZ into it. Now what's really interesting is that decaffeinated coffee did not have the same benefits as caffeinated coffee, which means it's really the caffeine found in coffee that's giving you these positive benefits. Now, how much is too much, right? So this has been a subject of review for tons of people and it really depends on a couple of things. For example, if you're somebody that's, like my wife, pregnant, or if you have underlying cardiovascular issues or I'm going to be honest, I think a big one is if you have underlying anxiety, so you're a really anxious person those groups probably should avoid caffeine or maybe just have small amounts. Everybody else. So, if you're healthy, you don't have any underlying conditions associated with it. As long as you don't have it at once and as long as you don't combine it with other ingredients, it's generally safe. So what I mean by this?

Speaker 1: 7:57

If you take a pre-workout, obviously there's different types of pre-workouts. Let's go to the common one Monster Energy, right. Monster and Red Bull have been given a lot of slack and people have died from it because it's mixed with other ingredients such as taurine. Taurine helps boost the caffeine concentrate in your bloodstream, so having something that has that in it is going to make that caffeine hit you more and you can have a toxicity levels of smuggling three or four Red Bulls. It's probably a horrible idea, especially because each one contains between 200, 300 milligrams of caffeine per can. Monster has 300, most pre-workouts so you know have either 200 or 300. Some I've seen as high as 500. So really make sure you're reading labels of how much caffeine is inside these things and do not mix your pre-workouts with your coffee, please, thank you.

Speaker 1: 8:47

Now what about coffee that doesn't like coffee, doesn't obviously have these extra ingredients, that it doesn't have your B vitamins, your tori, all this other ridiculous stuff that they put inside these free workouts? It's just a coffee bean that's brewed. You could generally have up to 400 milligrams of that and be safe. And 400 milligrams if a cup of coffee typically is 80 to 100, depending on the brain and the roast, that means roughly four and a half cups of coffee a day, no problems. Yay, now how much coffee is too much?

Speaker 1: 9:22

Drinking it black to cause an issue no one really knows. People are sensitive to different levels. Obviously, some things that are general side effects is jitters, anxiety, racing heart. I actually experience like a brain fog if I have too much caffeine, which is crazy to think about. But I've gone there a couple times because I'm like more coffee or I'm really enjoying it wherever I am, and then actually the opposite effect I just go flat. So I don't know if that happens to you guys, but it does happen to me. So there is a limit of having too much. I generally like to be in that four and five cup range.

Speaker 1: 9:56

I have a higher caffeine tolerance than most because I've been drinking it my entire life. So just make sure you're not just rushing into it because you want to grab the benefits. That's actually way worse. If you drink one or two cups, perfect, good for you, stay there, and that's something. It's just a good general embracing knowledge. So yay to coffee, yay to that. We know light roasts have more caffeine. We know that Starbucks adds more caffeine to the coffee. We know that pre-workouts are adding a whole bunch of shit inside of it. Just a couple of notes.

Speaker 1: 10:30

One of the things coffee definitely affects is sleep quality. We talk about important sleepers all the time. Right, sleep quality. In order to not be affected by coffee. You need a window. They say nine hours. I give seven as a little leeway. But even just go eight. Just go solid eight, meet in the middle, eight hours before bed. Absolutely no caffeine. It does screw up your sleep, even if you think you're the kind of person that can sleep through it, it doesn't. No, you can't. If you're the same thing as watching blue light, your eye strain, you think you're sleeping, you're not in stage four REM, you're gonna feel tired the next day, have more coffee, hit a negative feedback loop. We don't want that. So make sure you just cut that nine hours of bed.

Speaker 1: 11:19

If you're working at a night and you want to take a pre-workout, which has been shown to help in other studies, there are pre-workouts that are non-stim. If you need recommendations, shoot me a message, happy to point you guys in the right directions. Non-stim just means there's no caffeine associated with it. So you still can get B vitamins. You still can get beta-aladine if you want that like rush feeling. So definitely things you can do. Make sure you don't have coffee too late at night or shift to work out early in the morning. That's what I always say to do get your 5 am in if you sit there at 5 am or at 8 pm. So I hope you guys enjoyed this week's episode of Health and Fitness Redefined. Happy 4th of july to everybody watching. Happy birthday to you. America really appreciate you giving me the opportunity to have this podcast and come help you guys more. Next week we'll be back to having guests. Thank you so much, guys. Have a great day and don't forget fitness is medicine, so Outro Music.