Coffee: Good or Bad?

The only handheld item that has the power to replace a cell phone is coffee. Look around your first period class; everyone is drinking it. Not to mention some kids are on their second cup already. Coffee is being consumed by an ever increasing number of people a day. But what does coffee do to your health?

Caffeine is the most widely consumed stimulant worldwide. Many coffee drinkers use it to wake up and arouse their brain for work or school. Regular drinkers build up a tolerance over time and are forced to drink even more to get the same results. According to the Mayo Clinic, a nonprofit medical research organization, the negative effects of drinking coffee are “The caffeine in coffee can have several negative effects, such as temporary insomnia, nervousness, restlessness, irritability, stomach issues, rapid heartbeat and muscle tremors”.  Linda Barg, a senior at Ipswich High School claims,  “Coffee almost immediately makes me shaky, especially if it’s from Zumis because it is stronger than normal. So I refrain from drinking it most of the time even though it helps wake me up.” Not everyone drinks one sip and gets shaky because caffeine affects everyone differently.

So you drink coffee every day, so what? Let’s just say one day you decide not to drink it. You may experience withdrawal symptoms that are able to interfere with your daily activities such as headache, fatigue, irritability, and difficulty concentrating. Erin Lally vividly feels the withdrawal symptoms, “ I drink two cups of coffee. When I don’t drink both cups I get very painful migraines and I am unable to function. This forces me to get coffee into my system as fast as possible”.

However, some health experts believe that there are some positive effects of drinking coffee. There are small correlations between coffee drinking and resisting certain strains of skin cancer as well as helping the brain fight Alzheimers Disease. Though these interrelationships have yet to be officially studied. Whether you drink two plus cups of coffee a day or none at all it is important to know the effects of what caffeine does to your body. Happy drinking.