Free radicals are bad guys, and they sneak into your body in all sorts of ways. Once there, they try to use healthy cells to make themselves whole and powerful, but they mostly just whack your health something fierce.
If you want to fight back against free radicals — and win — drink coffee. Caffeinated coffee, black.
Doctors routinely tell patients to get off the stuff, but there’s no research behind the “no coffee” shtick, and bunches of evidence saying coffee’s good for what ails you.
So let’s talk about how coffee does its fight-the-free-radicals work.
First, terminology. “Free radicals” are cells with missing electrons, which fact they resent and which they need to fix if they’re to survive.
Everything we do creates free radicals–breathing, eating, sleeping, exercise (big time) and everything else. We cannot avoid free radicals.
But we need to be aware of what’s going on because sitting back and letting the bad guys win the day isn’t an option. Every free radical’s goal is to attack healthy cells and steal the parts they need to be whole again.
Then the formerly-healthy cells become free radicals, and they start attacking healthy cells to replace their missing parts. And on, and on, and on.
It’s all-out war, and wars have consequences.
All this free radical activity creates oxidation, otherwise known as rust, that spreads far and wide throughout the body parts. Rusty parts don’t work well. In the end, they don’t work at all.
Time to call the cavalry! Antioxidants to the rescue!
Antioxidants remove free-radical rust.
Now, not everything that gets touted as an antioxidant actually is, but coffee does an excellent antioxidant mambo.
In fact, a cup of java generates more antioxidant activity than typical servings of blueberries, raspberries or grape juice–all known for their superior antioxidant skills. And four times as much as a cup of green tea.
And black coffee has no calories! Be still my heart!
Coffee contains more than 300 different, organic compounds. This complexity may explain the wide-ranging health results coffee achieves.
One or more of those 300+ compounds may be the reason some stomachs don’t get along with coffee. Coffee sensitivity isn’t common, but it does happen.
Contrary to popular opinion, caffeine doesn’t work as a stimulant. Instead, it outmaneuvers a natural, sedating chemical in our bodies, adenosine. Adenosine tamps down brain activity against overstimulation. It accumulates through the day, finally sending us stumbling off to bed at night.
Caffeine looks a whole lot like adenosine–chemically speaking–and uses that similarity to counteract adenosine’s effects by temporarily blocking some of adenosine’s efforts.
Caffeine can’t get into the cell and take over. It just plops itself down like a Jabba-the-Hut lid and keeps adenosine out. With adenosine in check, metabolism perks up and drowsiness doesn’t take over.
And when caffeine’s work is done–in about 45 minutes or so–the cell is again made available for adenosine.
Is this amazing or what?
Energy drinks work on the mistaken, but widely believed, idea that coffee is a stimulant. That may be why energy drinks sometimes cause problems. One problem is energy drinks give caffeine a bad name.
One anti-coffee site unhappily states that hundreds of studies failed to find a single reason to indict coffee for causing diseases or health problems. Then advises readers to avoid it and seek a better stimulant than coffee.
They obviously don’t understand coffee; they just know for sure they don’t like it.
Personally, I like the idea coffee does all it does without shifting my body into high gear. It gently keeps drowsiness away, then leaves quietly when the work is finished. Gently used parts, including body parts, last longer.
For best results, buy organic coffee beans and grind them as needed.
God is good,
Bette Dowdell
About the author: Bette Dowdell defines determination. In a really deep health ditch, with doctors who didn’t help, she got her Oh-Yeah! attitude in gear and researched her way out. She never intended to be a health expert, but sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. You can subscribe to Bette’s free e-mails on how to solve health problems at http://TooPoopedToParticipate.com
