Table of contents:
- The effect of drinking black coffee without sugar
- The effect of drinking coffee with sugar or other sweeteners
Whether it's to wake up body and soul in the morning before doing activities or just for friends on the weekend, many of us think of a cup of black coffee as an inseparable part of life.
This favorite brewed by a million people has a myriad of well-known benefits, from increasing energy and concentration to helping you lose weight. Black coffee is also a heart friend. The strong antioxidant content in coffee helps maintain heart health and also its rhythm, so drinking black coffee regularly can prevent all types of heart disease.
Coffee is a healthy drink, but it will depend on how you drink it. Hmm … use sugar or not, huh?
The effect of drinking black coffee without sugar
A cup of black coffee is practically zero calories. But black coffee also doesn't provide valuable nutritional value. A cup of black coffee without sugar contains no carbohydrates, fat, protein and a number of other important macronutrients, such as calcium and fiber. Coffee is the biggest contributor to caffeine, a stimulant that helps people feel more energized.
Caffeine from a cup of black coffee can be absorbed into the blood very quickly in just 20 minutes, and will remain in the bloodstream for more than 12 hours. Shortly after your first sip, the caffeine now in your bloodstream causes a spike in your heart rate, blood pressure, and energy. Shortly thereafter, caffeine begins to affect adenosine levels in the brain. Adenosine is a chemical in total that's responsible for telling your body it's time for sleep; caffeine binds to the brain's adenosine receptors and turns them off. This is why after twenty minutes since your last cup of coffee you are likely to feel overwhelmed literate and excited.
At this point, your body starts producing adrenaline, which in turn increases your energy production. This increase in adrenaline levels then causes the airways to dilate and blood flow will flood the muscles. Black coffee also improves the mood of the drinker because the brain becomes more sensitive to serotonin, a neurotransmitter that is responsible for regulating mood.
About three to four hours after the last cup of coffee, you will begin to experience a decrease in energy due to the energizing effect caused by the caffeine waning. This energy drop occurs because the caffeine in coffee doesn't actually make you more energetic, it just acts as a fake boost to make you feel less tired - which, in fact, it is.
Then, what is the effect on the body if you add sugar or creamer to your black coffee cup?
The effect of drinking coffee with sugar or other sweeteners
Consuming small doses of sugar is nothing to worry about, but most of us eat too much sugar. In fact, some coffee drinks made by commercial coffee shops out there are high in fat, high in sugar, and high in calories. If you order a cup of cappuccino with fresh milk, for example, you will consume an additional 77 calories and 4 grams of fat. A cup of espresso full-bodied thick mixed with steamed milk and vanilla syrup contains 35 grams of sugar, 37 grams of carbohydrates, with 250 kcal.
When you eat something that's loaded with sugar, your taste buds, your gut, and your brain all work together to respond to one another. The sweet taste of sugar turns on the reward area of the brain, causing the release of waves of dopamine, a chemical signal for elevating mood. This reward system activation actually doesn't work like how the body processes other addictive substances, such as alcohol or nicotine.
Excess sugar pumps dopamine levels out of the way, which makes you lose control and increases your body's sugar tolerance so you'll want to eat more sugar. On the other hand, there is a certain limit to how much sugar the liver can process. If you consume too much sugar and your liver can't process all that energy properly, your liver has no choice but to convert excess sugar into liver fat.
The amount of sugar flooding the blood creates a sudden spike in blood sugar levels. This causes the body to produce insulin very quickly. Insulin triggers the use of glucose by the tissues in the body for use as energy. At the same time, insulin strengthens the smooth communication between brain cells and thus forms strong memories. This energy production then causes a drop in glucose levels leading to feelings of lethargy, headaches, fatigue, and sudden anxiety due to dropping blood sugar levels.
When insulin levels in the brain are lowered as a result of excess sugar consumption, the learning process and memory acuity in the brain are also disrupted. This is the reason behind why you tend to be more restless and have trouble concentrating after consuming a lot of sugar.
