Science and technology.
Well informed.
How much coffee is too much?
Studies suggest moderate consumption is harmless and may even be beneficial.
Humanity drinks about 2 billion cups of coffee every day.
The good news for those who contribute to that figure is that regularly consuming moderate amounts does not appear to be harmful.
There may even be health benefits.
Experiments conducted in vitro and in animals have long shown that some components of coffee,
including cephistol, carbyol,
caffeine, and chlorogenic acids,
can reduce inflammation as well as cell damage caused by a chemical process known as oxidation.
When a team led by Marzieh Moenfad of the University of Porto looked more closely,
they found that the potential benefits ran deeper.
She reported in the Journal of Cellular Biochemistry in 2016 that Caffestol and Kawiol,
which tend to be more prevalent in unfiltered than in filtered coffee,
arrested tumour growth by making it less likely that new blood vessels would form around tumour cells and that chlorogenic acids inhibited the formation of carcinogens within the body.
This suggested coffee might be good for fending off cancer.
One follow-up study led by Jin Kyung Oh of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm reported that post-menopausal women who claimed to drink three or four cups of coffee per day were significantly less likely to develop breast cancer than women who said they drank up to two cups.
Similar work in Japan suggested that those who said they drank three or more cups every day had a reduced risk of developing liver cancer.
Because caffeine is a stimulant that improves mood and combats tiredness,