5 Surprising Facts About Coffee That You Probably Didn't Know

Since we drink 95 million cups of coffee in the UK each day, you might be interested in these 5 surprising things about coffee!

Dr Michael Mosley on his programme, “Just One Thing”, has researched how coffee can affect your health in ways you might not expect.

1. Better Health

Up to three cups of coffee a day has been shown to be linked to both better brain and heart health, with a lower risk of stroke, heart disease and dementia.

2. Weight Loss

Dr Mosley says that coffee could be a “secret weapon” for weight loss. Drinking coffee stimulates brown fat, which generates body heat by burning calories. Recent research shows that women who drank two to three cups of coffee a day had less total body fat and abdominal fat than those who didn’t drink coffee.

3. Sports Performance

Drinking coffee an hour before sport or exercise has been shown to improve sporting performance. Dr James Betts, Professor of Metabolic Physiology at the University of Bath, says that most sporting events require a combination of speed, skill, endurance and strength and caffeine seems to tick all of these boxes.

4. Timing

You should be aware of the time that you drink coffee. Drinking it straight after you get up in the morning, particularly after a fragmented sleep, can affect your glucose response by 50%, which is known to be detrimental to long term health.

5. Dehydration

Once you get to five or six cups of coffee in a day, it can become a diuretic (increases production of urine and loss of water from the body) so you can actually become dehydrated and as we know here at recuperol, dehydration is a big no-no for general health and wellbeing!