Excess amounts of caffeine can cause headaches, a feeling of floating, anxiety and heart palpitations.
The Chair of the Australian Medical Association Council of General Practice says that rather than helping the brain, too much caffeine will interfere with studies.
If an excess is bad for students, what about the rest of us?
While some advocate the beneficial effects that coffee has on our health, others see the reverse. Only people who do not regularly drink coffee will get a jolt from caffeine.
Here are some of the negative effects from Health Ambition:
Drinking coffee on an empty stomach, such as first thing in the morning, stimulates hydrochloric acid(HCI) production. This can be a problem because HCl should only be produced to digest meals. If your body has to make the acid more often in response to regular cups of coffee, it may have difficulty producing enough to deal with a large meal.
Many of the compounds in coffee like caffeine and the various acids found in coffee beans can irritate your stomach and the lining of your small intestine. It’s known to be a problem for those suffering from ulcers, gastritis, IBS and Crohn’s disease and doctors generally advise patients with these conditions to avoid coffee completely. The question is, could excessive coffee consumption contribute to these health issues in the first place?
Caffeine is known to relax the esophageal sphincter so Coke and high caffeine ‘energy drinks’ can also contribute to heartburn, but coffee is particularly problematic for this.
Drinking coffee can stimulate peristalsis, the process in the digestive tract that makes us head for the bathroom. Some people use it deliberately as a laxative, but there’s a problem with this. By stimulating peristalsis, coffee also appears to promote increased gastric emptying, whereby the stomach’s contents are quickly passed into the small intestines, often before the digesting food has been properly broken down.
Heavy coffee drinkers may have difficulty getting enough minerals in their diet, even if they eat mineral rich foods or take supplements.
Acrylamide is a potentially carcinogenic (cancer-causing) substance that forms when coffee beans are roasted at high temperatures. The darker the roast, the higher the levels of acrylamide are likely to be. In fact, coffee has been shown to be one of the major sources of this dangerous chemical in American diets.
Drinking lots of coffee will promote the release of the stress hormones cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine. These chemicals increase your body’s heart rate, blood pressure and tension levels – the old ‘fight or flight’ response.
People often say they need to drink coffee to give them energy. But for many, it may have gone further—more like a jittery tension that makes it difficult to relax. Maybe it pushes people to get through the trials of the day, but the long-term health implications should be considered.
I'd suggest alternating the drink with other hot liquids like fennel or mixed berry tea. There are tons of different concoctions available. You can't go wrong with a nice cup of traditional tea served with a dash of milk. I drink three of these a day. However, each time we visited America, my husband and I noticed the weakness of the brew so we took our own from England.
Do you drink too much coffee?