A Bittersweet Addiction: The Harmful Effects of Too Much Coffee

By TGP / Categories: Healthy Lifestyle
Coffee

A warm and tasty cup of coffee is often a great way to start a good day—or turn a bad one around! It also helps your medicines for coughs and colds do its job as its stimulating effects clears sinuses. However, don’t have too much of this ever-popular beverage! After all, everything, even something as healthy and beneficial as coffee, has harmful drawbacks when taken in excess. The following are a few side effects of being over-hooked on everyone’s favorite caffeinated drink.

Hyperacidity

Hyperacidity

It’s quite nice to sip coffee early in the morning. However, it shouldn’t be the first thing you’re downing since it can cause hyperacidity and ulcers. Caffeine, the most known compound found in coffee, makes your stomach produce hydrochloric acid when drank with an empty stomach. The excess hydrochloric acid levels will damage your stomach linings and cause you to have insufficient amounts of the acid when you actually need it, such as digesting food. And if food isn’t properly digested, it can cause a lot of problems in the gastric tract. To make matters worse, caffeine itself irritates and damages the linings of your stomach and small intestines!

Acid Reflux/Heartburn

Acid Reflux/Heartburn

What’s already come down your pipes shouldn’t go back up. But by drinking too much coffee, it will! Thanks to caffeine, which makes your esophageal sphincter relax instead of contract, the contents of your stomach like hydrochloric acid can go up your esophageal tract and damage its delicate lining. And apparently it’s not just the caffeine that’s causing this anomaly, as even a lot of decaf lovers suffer the same problem!

Faster Gastric Emptying

Coffee makes many of your systems more active, and among them is your gastrointestinal tract. Because of this and because it stimulates peristalsis, a lot of people use coffee as a laxative. However, even though lower bowel movement is the only effect they want to achieve, their stomach is also affected, causing it to dump its contents into their small intestine at a faster rate regardless of whether it has been thoroughly digested or otherwise. And as previously mentioned above, undigested food down the small intestine can cause a plethora of problems in the gastric tract.

In addition, because of its effects on lower bowel movement, it can also cause you incontinence or loss of bladder control. According to a study from the University of Alabama, women who drink coffee are 70% more likely to become incontinence.

Heart Problems

When you start having strong and heavy, anxiety-inducing palpitations, you know you’ve already had too much coffee. That’s because caffeine causes your heart to beat faster and stronger—a life-threatening danger for those with cardiovascular problems. Also, it has been found out that coffee increases blood pressure, which must be avoided by those who are at risk with stroke.

Stress and Over Dependence

College students, workaholics, and night shift employees don’t just take coffee for enjoyment. They also have it as fuel to burn while pulling out an all-nighter. If you’re one of them, then it’s good that you’re fulfilling your responsibilities. However, the problem with what you’re doing is that it makes you dependent on coffee to stay awake at night. Additionally, if you’re already stressed, then caffeine makes it a lot worse since it releases cortisol, which is capable of taking your stress levels a few notches.

There’s nothing wrong with making coffee a part of your life. However, you should know when you’ve had enough. After all, you’ll be forced to miss out on this delicious drink if you fall ill because for its sake!

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