BlogsCoffee: Friend or Foe? Coffee may not be a health food, but
it’s not as toxic as some believe. Each day, 150 million
Americans drink 400 million cups of coffee. While some people
can’t start their day without an extra-tall latte, others blame
coffee for a whole range of symptoms, like jittery nerves,
racing heart, and headaches. To determine whether there’s any
basis to coffee’s negative reputation, researchers in Israel
tested the effect of one of coffee’s best-known
ingredients—caffeine—on the function of arteries. They gave
caffeine pills to two groups of people—healthy subjects and ones
with cardiovascular disease. Eighty-three percent of the people
in the study were men. The pills contained 250 milligrams of
caffeine—two-and-a-half times what is found in a cup of coffee.
The researchers tested the endothelial function of the
volunteers before and after taking the pill. Healthy subjects
had better endothelial—or artery—function than those with heart
disease, which is what the researchers expected. Th