A Spark of the Diving with Every Cup of Coffee

I have never considered myself to be a morning person.  Getting up before the sun is a constant challenge for me.  At the same time, I’ve noticed how much more can be accomplished in my day when I do.

My journey in accomplishing this is starting with a good night’s sleep the night before, followed by prayer and a cup of coffee in the morning.

During my undergrad, I was not sure about coffee yet.  I remember considering the possibility that I would never drink a cup.  That all changed the summer I started my graduate school work.  During the summer of San Antonio, it is hot and humid everywhere, until you walk into an air conditioned building.  That was the case for me my first summer of grad school.  Along with trying to find warmth in a cold classroom, I also found myself struggling to stay awake after a long night’s work of studying.

During one of my class breaks I decided to go ahead and give the coffee thing a try.  In the start of my journey with coffee I needed the cream to help work through the bitter taste of the coffee.  Overtime, I discovered multiple benefits of a good cup of coffee.

As my morning coffee was becoming a part of my daily routine I began to meditate on the beverage. 

In my thoughts, I reflected on the spark of the divine in the cup of coffee.  The obvious spark, the caffeine providing the energy boost is evident, and I will address that in a bit.  But, the sparked connection I noticed was how coffee can enhance our mission.  It offers a means of connection to the work we’re doing for the people we come in contact with.  Think of how often, especially those of us who have worked in ministry, we crave energy to get us through a retreat weekend, stay awake at the evening parish council meeting, and/or survive Holy Week without approaching burnout.  As a result, coffee has become a means in which God gives us energy to carry out His mission for our lives. 

Additionally, I noticed how many relationships a started over a cup of coffee.  I noticed how, the first date for so many couples seems to be over a cup of coffee, to include the first date I had with my husband.  Coffee, not only becomes a means of finding out soulmate, but also brings people together to socialize after a worship service and/or the casual meetup and catch up with a friend.  Coffee is not only God’s gift to give us energy, it has also become a gift to build community.

Along with enhancing our connections with the divine and fellow human beings, coffee provides benefits to our physical health as well.  It’s brewed from beans, so many of the nutrients that make them a powerhouse show up in your coffee cup.  A single cholesterol-free regular sized cup of coffee black provides 12% of the magnesium and potassium and 16% of the calcium you’d get from a half cup of cooked kidney beans, all for 2 calories.  While it’s true that coffee has none of the protein, dietary fiber and other nutrients you’d get from eating the 70 calories worth of kidney beans, the good news is that coffee can provide a brain boost and maybe even help you live longer.

Here are just some of the ways coffee makes life better:

• Coffee Literally Lights Up Your Brain.  When you take a sip of coffee, as mentioned before, the spark of caffeine zips through your body to your brain and blocks adenosine, a chemical that slows down transmission of message from one brain cell to another.  By setting adenosine aside, two other natural chemicals in the brain, norepinephrine and dopamine, spring into action to fire up your nerve cells that enable you to think faster.  That’s why caffeine makes you alert.  The challenge in drinking coffee for this benefit is figuring out how much.  According to the Coffee and Caffeine Genetics Consortium, caffeine effects depend on the individual.  A good rule of thumb here, is just like everything else, read the signs of your body and drink coffee in moderation.

   

• Coffee Enhances Endurance Exercise.  According to the American College of Sports medicine, caffeine enhances your exercise endurance by releasing adrenaline into your bloodstream.  The adrenaline triggers the release of fatty acids that provide energy in endurance exercises, such as a marathon runner, sparing glycogen (muscle fuel) for later effort.

   

• Coffee Lowers Your Risk of Stroke.  As a stroke survivor, I take this one to heart.  In 2011, a report in the medical journal Stroke identified a connection between women coffee drinkers with a 25 percent lower chance of getting a stroke than women who never drank coffee.  This might have something to do with caffeine’s ability to expand blood vessels and reduce blood clotting.

   

• Coffee May Ward off Type 2 Diabetes.  In 2014, researchers at the Nurses’ Health Study found a 20 percent lower risk of Type 2 diabetes among those who drank up to four cups of coffee a day compared to non-coffee drinkers.  This isn’t to say that coffee excuses other life habits as a means to prevent diabetes, but a plain cup of coffee— not cream or sugar (sorry)— provides healthy hopes.

   

• Coffee Drinkers Live Longer.  The New England Journal of Medicine in 2013 showed a clear link between coffee-drinking and healthy longevity.  This study started in 1995 through the National Institutes of Health tracking more than 500,000 men and women for about 12 years.  No one knows exactly which of the hundreds of compounds in coffee are responsible for this health benefit, but more studies are being done to better understand why.

I know mixed reviews are out there regarding coffee and it’s benefits.  Are there some concerns of drinking too much?  Yes, eating or drinking to much of anything can contribute to problems like weight gain, dehydration, energy drainers, and others.   

The best way to work around this is first, always talk to your doctor and/or a nutritionist to learn about what is appropriate for you body based on your current health and medications you might be taking.  At the end of the day, learn to read your body.  It is pretty intuitive and tells you what it needs, and your tastebuds know what they like.  Don’t let yourself get too stressed out about whether or not to drink a cup of coffee to spark your mornings and/or miss out on the great connections you can have with others.