There’s Evidence Coffee Acts on Your Brain Like Cannabis, But in Reverse

Coffee, the world’s most common recreational drug, affects our metabolism far more deeply than we realised, according to a recent study.

The results describe a number of knock-on effects that impact upon several important body systems, suggesting our daily coffee habit might have a complex range of benefits and risks to our health.

It seems hardly a month goes by when there’s a new discovery that coffee is either good for our health and helps you live a longer life, or a potential danger and cancer risk.  

In between the hype and the headlines, the truth is always more complicated. And this 2018 study points to why – it turns out the compounds in our daily cup of joe change more metabolites in our blood than previously known.

The investigation entailed 47 coffee drinkers to give up the habit for a month before throwing back four cups of coffee each day for the next 30 days. Following that, they upped their coffee intake to eight cups.

All the while, researchers were taking blood samples to analyse changes in biochemistry that result from consuming food and drink.

The resulting profile revealed 115 metabolites were impacted by the consumption of coffee. A total of 82 of those chemicals were already known, and could be mapped to 33 metabolic pathways, a number of which were completely new relationships.

The exact consequences of these changes weren’t explored, but what is apparent is that we really should be paying attention.


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