PODCAST: Coffee Is the World's No. 2 Beverage — But Is It Healthy?

ZACH MOORE: Welcome to On Health with Houston Methodist. I’m Zach Moore, I’m a photographer and editor here and I’m also a longtime podcaster.

KIM RIVERA HUSTON-WEBER: I’m Kim Rivera Huston-Weber and I’m a copywriter here at Houston Methodist.

ZACH: And Kim, do you drink coffee?

KIM: Yes. Yes, I do.

ZACH: Is that a dumb question? You feel like that’s a silly question.

[Laughter]

KIM: I mean, a lot of people drink coffee. I feel like my relationship with coffee has changed. I drink a lot less now than I used to so I kind of keep it to a quarter of a pot of coffee, like if you’re brewing it at home.

ZACH: Okay.

KIM: So…

ZACH: Okay.

KIM: I used to be the person that could have like two pots of coffee before noon. A lot. Yeah.

ZACH: That’s a lot.

KIM: As I learned from my expert, I might have been overdosing myself on caffeine a little bit.

ZACH: Yeah.

KIM: But as I’ve aged, I think I’m a little more sensitive to caffeine now than I used to be. And that just may be a perception, but yeah, that’s kinda my relationship with coffee. 

ZACH: Okay. I have no relationship with coffee. I would say that’s not fair, because I do drink a lot of these fancy drinks at your coffee shops that are like -- that have the complicated names and all that stuff. I’ll get those. But I really -- I’m more like a social coffee drinker. It’s like, “Oh, we’re going to the coffee shop. Well, I guess I’ll get a -- what do you have that’s not coffee?” Is usually what I will get at these places.

KIM: What can you do to mask the taste of this coffee?

ZACH: Yeah, well, that’s the thing, right? The taste has always been a turn off for me when it comes to coffee. Because, like, why did you start drinking coffee? To get the caffeine boost, is that why you started?

KIM: I think to be quite honest, peer pressure. Like, you know, I grew up in a small town. The only thing to do like that was open past 8:00.p.m was Denny’s so you just would go and drink coffee at Denny’s and that was socializing in my small Indiana town.

ZACH: Mm-hmm. Yeah, for me I guess -- I used to work in TV, right? Everybody in TV, “Oh, I gotta get up and drink my coffee.” I’m like, “I’m gonna just drink a 12 pack of soft drinks today.”

[Laughter]

Oh yeah. Not in one day, right? But what I -- To fill that caffeine need that you would have in those situations where you’re getting up at 4:00 a.m. I wouldn’t drink coffee or energy drinks, I’d just drink soft drinks and sodas, right? And just crush these sodas. And when you’re 22, I mean, whatever, right? You can do whatever you want…

KIM: Yeah.

ZACH: Well, within reason, of course.

KIM: Of course.

ZACH: But I never really felt the need to drink coffee, and I tried, they’re like, “Oh man, you gotta try some good brew, man.” And so, I tried it. I’m like, “This is -- This tastes terrible. I don’t want this.” But to make it taste better, you gotta add all sorts of stuff to it. Some of it is good for you, some of it is not so good for you. And so, that’s where I’m at with coffee. And yes, nowadays, I will drink these, like, coffee energy drink things on occasion because I like the taste. And that’s when it’s come to I’ll drink anything if it tastes good.

KIM: Yeah, I might be the opposite. I take my coffee black, or I drink my coffee black.

ZACH: Oh wow. Okay.

KIM: I buy specialty beans and --

ZACH: Okay, you’re one of those. Okay.

KIM: Yeah. I’m definitely one of those. I have two different coffee machines in my house.

ZACH: Okay.

KIM: Yeah. I -- And I still feel like I am a moderate coffee person. I don’t think --

ZACH: You do.

KIM: Yes, I do. I don’t think I rise to the level of, like, a coffee nerd, I would say.

ZACH: So, how many coffee machines would a coffee nerd have in their house?

KIM: Oh gosh. I mean, mine aren’t very fancy. I think maybe that’s where I’m drawing the line. It’s like, you know, mine are very affordable...

ZACH: Okay.

KIM: coffee machines. I’m not having like, you know, the Lexus coffee machines that some folks will get.

ZACH: I understand.

KIM: And, you know, my coffee grinder, I think I got from a college roommate and it’s the one I’ve had for 20 years.

ZACH: Okay.

KIM: My setup is not fancy.

ZACH: Gotcha. And that’s what we’re talking about in today’s podcast. Coffee, its health benefits or lack thereof.

KIM: Yeah, I think our episode is really gonna surprise some folks, especially those that are like me in the past and drinking a lot of coffee.

ZACH: And who did we talk to about this, Kim?

KIM: We spoke with Dr. Priya Davar. She’s a Primary Care Physician here at Houston Methodist.

[Sound effect plays to signal beginning of interview]

KIM: I saw a surprising statistic recently that 67% of Americans say they’ve drank coffee in the past day, which is more than any other beverage including water, either bottled or tapped. And 75% of American adults said they’ve had coffee in the past week. I count myself among them. I love coffee and it’s a really rare day that it’s not the first thing that I consume during the day. So, I think distilling it down to its basic parts, it’s coffee beans and water. So, to start, like what are we actually consuming when we drink coffee. Like, what’s in it that makes us enjoy it so much?

DR. PRIYA DAVAR: So, coffee is made up of a bunch of different things: caffeine, antioxidants, and some other compounds that contribute to its delicious flavor and aroma including acids, oils, and some minerals.

KIM: I’ve been drinking coffee since I was a teenager. I don’t think it stunted my growth, maybe I’ll ask you about that later. But I was really surprised to learn that in my lifetime the research has really zigged and zagged in terms of whether or not it’s considered a healthy beverage. So, what does current research have to say about the health benefits of coffee?

DR. DAVAR: It’s actually really interesting when I was looking into this. I did find various studies about how coffee can prevent certain types of diseases and syndromes. So, there is a -- For example, a publication from the U.K. Biobank cohort which is a prospective cohort study that included over 300,000 people ages 50 to 74 years of age who drink at least two to three cups of coffee each day. And this study showed that there was a significant association with lowering risk of stroke and post stroke dementia, which is memory loss for these coffee drinkers. There was another study that indicated that coffee consumption may have some protective effect against certain types of gastrointestinal cancers like colon cancer and liver cancer. And we think that this comes from the fact that there is an antioxidant activity in the chemical compounds of coffee, and the coffee bean. And this is actually also found in decaf coffee.

KIM: Oh, really. So, the caffeine, it matters but it doesn’t matter.

DR. DAVAR: It’s mostly the coffee bean itself that is helping with this prevention for these certain types of diseases.

KIM: Interesting. I think there is a subset of the population that thinks of coffee being a vice or maybe even considered a drug, and from just some brief research I saw that there’s a lot of folks that believe that coffee just isn’t good for you, that it spikes our cortisol, causes anxiety, depletes magnesium, or is a gut irritant. So, is there any truth to any of these claims or are they just maybe based on outdated research? Can you kinda talk about any of the downsides that may accompany drinking coffee?

DR. DAVAR: I think that the negative effects of coffee mostly come from the fact that it is a caffeinated beverage. And so, the majority of the time that we’re gonna see some adverse effects from coffee consumption is when you are exceeding the recommended amount which is when you exceed more than 500 milligrams of caffeine in a day. And so, if you do exceed that amount, most people will have some level of anxiousness, or agitation, restlessness. It can even affect your sleep, I mean, cause insomnia. It can elevate your heart rate and even cause some loose stools. Because the way that caffeine is metabolized through your body, it works on different types of nerve receptors to cause these side effects. And in some people, caffeine can hang around their body for even longer, so some people if they drink coffee during the day and it sits in their system for eight to 14 hours, it’s probably gonna affect their sleep. And we do know that in pregnant women, you know, they’re not supposed to be drinking more than 200 milligrams of coffee per day. And the reason for that is research has shown that high caffeine intake can actually result in changes in the placental circulation and the uterus vascular circulation and cause the fetus actually to have increased heart rates. So, there are definitely some populations that should probably be wary of coffee consumption.

KIM: Okay. Interesting. So, that 500 milligrams is what you said, right?

DR. DAVAR: Mm-hmm.

KIM: So, like, if we’re thinking about that, is that just coffee or is that our entire caffeine intake for the day?

DR. DAVAR: So, that is our entire caffeine intake. I guess I was just leaning heavily towards the fact that we’re talking about coffee today. So --

KIM: No, no, no. For sure.

[Laughter]

Just to understand, because I know that for myself, I will drink three or four cups of coffee in the morning, but then in the afternoon I might reach for a diet soda or something like that. I think most of us don’t think of dosing ourselves with caffeine in terms of milligrams throughout our day. So, just like, how much should we be thinking? So, like, if I’m having my four cups of coffee, is having the diet pop in the afternoon or in the evening, is that bad? How should we think about our caffeine intake in the day to make sure that we’re not hurting our sleep?

DR. DAVAR: Yeah, sure. So, I think one aspect of it is timing your coffee intake, your caffeine intake. So if you think about the fact that the caffeine from that beverage is gonna last in your system for eight hours, depending on most people’s schedule if you wake up in the morning and you drink a cup of coffee, hopefully by the time you’re going to bed, if you go to bed around 9:00, or 10 o’clock at night, let’s say you should be fine. But if you’re drinking another cup of coffee or another caffeinated beverage in the afternoon, that could overlap into your sleep time and so that could definitely affect your sleep cycle. And then the 500 milligrams a day is a rough estimate of three to four cups, 8 ounce, cups of coffee. It also depends on how the coffee is brewed and, you know, various other components. But that’s on average what we’re talking about.

KIM: Interesting. So, for me, splurging on coffee is like going to a coffee shop and I’m having an Americano that I did not make myself, like, that’s a splurge for me. And so, you’d mentioned how the coffee is made. So, does the type of coffee and like how we’re grinding it whether it’s coarse or fine, if it’s a dark or light roast, if we’re using a drip machine, or if we’re using an espresso machine, or French press, does it have an effect on any of the health benefits that we might see?

DR. DAVAR: So, that’s a good question. I wish I had more data to really present to you, but what I could find is really that the only major difference is drinking filtered or nonfiltered coffee. So, filtered coffee, that technique in itself, it does have the potential to eliminate some of the carcinogens that may have come in the coffee bean. And then roasting the coffee at a dark roast can eliminate some of the pesticides which we see in some coffee beans. As far as the components of health benefits I think that question still remains.

KIM: So, I think I might be a bit in the minority in terms of I prefer to drink my coffee black. There are different aromas and flavors. The different types of beans, and it’s kinda like wine to me. And that, like, you can get really nerdy with it if you want to in terms of where the beans were grown and all that. But I understand for a lot of folks they’re not drinking coffee for the epicurean delight of it. They’re drinking it because they want that morning jolt of caffeine and they just simply prefer to mask the flavor. So, does the way we take our coffee matter in terms of our diet and our overall health? Are we kind of eliminating any of those health benefits if we are using lots of artificial creamers, or half and half, or sugar for example?

DR. DAVAR: I think the healthiest way to drink your coffee would probably be black because then you’re getting all the health components from the coffee bean itself. Anytime you’re putting any additive in it, you know, like heavy cream which is, you know, can contain a lot of fat or sugar then you’re kind of thinking about the excess amount of carbohydrates. So, coffee is actually -- do contain fat as I mentioned earlier is one of the chemical compounds. There’s some thought process if we’re adding additional fats to it, it may kind of counteract some of the health benefits of coffee. So, if you really wanna take it as a medicinal coffee, I would probably drink it black.

KIM: Yeah. And if, you know, we want to treat ourself or we just wanna mask it, is there a preferred way? Should we be thinking of like fat free milk? Is there a healthier way for us to be kind of dressing our coffee if we don’t like the taste of it black?

DR. DAVAR: I think you kinda have to be mindful of how you’re flavoring it. If you were to do something that was sugar free but maybe with a little bit of cow’s milk, I think it would be perfectly fine to do that.

KIM: So, kind of to that earlier point about some folks think of coffee perhaps as a drug or just not a healthy choice for themselves. They get jittery, what have you. So, there’s been a lot of these coffee alternatives that have come up. And so, most of them have different ingredients but I think one of the through line ingredients are mushrooms. So, there are these kind of like mushroom drinks. And a lot of the companies are saying that, you know, can boost your body’s energy and focus, your immunity and mental performance, and all that. But what do we know about any of these coffee alternatives, and should we be thinking of them more like they are supplements versus a beverage, like you would, coffee? What level of skepticism should we approach with these drinks? 

DR. DAVAR: It’s really interesting because, yeah, they’re all these new types of mushroom coffees that have come out on the market and they have different strains of mushrooms in them. And a lot of the companies are claiming that they have these immune boosting properties, and they can help to regulate metabolism, and they’re high in antioxidant activity and all these things. And even some of them have said that they can help slow down the aging process. But unfortunately, there have not really been any well-designed clinical trials on humans as far as whether mushroom coffee has any benefits. We know mushrooms in themselves do have a lot of these antioxidant benefits. So, I think at the end of the day, if you wanna get some good antioxidants from your mushrooms, you probably should just stir-fry some shiitake mushrooms and try eating it that way.

[Laughter]

KIM: Well, I mean, that’s good to know. Usually, I think I’m a person that is very weary of supplements, but, you know, I understand that for some people they don’t like the feeling that they have when they drink coffee. And so, I can see looking for an alternative, but I think when any kind of products making a huge claim like that you should probably be weary. I think that’s just me maybe.

DR. DAVAR: Yeah. That makes sense. I think that it would be an interesting alternative. I think the question is still out there as to whether or not it’s a viable alternative. But I think that we just have to stay tuned and see what happens with it.

KIM: So, the World Health Organization included coffee on its list of possible carcinogens in 1991, and it wouldn’t be until 2016 that the organization’s international agency for research on cancer found that the beverage was not associated with an increased risk of cancer. So, do we know why coffee was listed as a possible carcinogen for so long?

DR. DAVAR: Yeah, that’s a good question. I have seen some data that kind of talks about how those coffee beans are grown, prepared, and turned into coffee product. And I had mentioned earlier that some of them have found pesticides and perhaps it’s just the bean itself and maybe just not grown in the -- in a proper way. But so far what I’ve seen has been very positive for coffee. I haven’t seen any carcinogenic data on it recently. So, I’m not really sure why it was getting such a bad rap previously.

KIM: Yeah. I wonder and -- I don’t know, this is just conjuncture on my part. Because I can definitely remember a time where it was fully okay for people to smoke and - in restaurants - which seems crazy now, but I think for a long time cigarettes and coffee were hand in hand for a lot of consumers. So, I wonder if maybe that could have been a potential link, or I don’t know. But I was really surprised when I saw that it was cleared.

[Laughter]

Like, that wasn’t that long ago.

[Laughing]

DR. DAVAR: Yeah. I think there are probably -- there is a lot of research lacking in that area and people maybe weren’t as interested in understanding what coffee really was all about. But now, I think now that we’re seeing that there may be some preventive effects of it, people are more interested in pursuing research to see if there’re any benefits. So, I think it may be just the data has -- the good data has outweighed the bad data, and now we’re seeing that actually is a pretty healthy beverage to consume.

[Music to signal a brief interjection in the interview]

ZACH: Despite being called a bean, coffee is actually a fruit. The beans grow on a bush and are found in the center of a berry known as a coffee cherry. Coffee is the second most consumed beverage globally, second place only to water, with about 2 billion cups drank every day. While water is always the best choice for staying hydrated, coffee can count towards your daily fluid goals. The caffeine in coffee has a mild diuretic effect, but it is offset by the total amount of fluid from the coffee.

 [Music]

KIM: Up after the break Dr. Davar shares the differences between coffee and tea.

ANNOUNCER: From annual checkups to managing chronic conditions, your healthcare should be personalized to you. At Houston Methodist, our primary care doctors provide customized care for you and your family with more than 40 convenient locations across Greater Houston. We offer a variety of ways to get care, from in-person and virtual appointments to same-day visits when you're sick. Choose your doctor and schedule online at Houstonmethodist.org/stayhealthy. Houston Methodist, leading medicine.

 [Sound effect signals return to the interview]

KIM: You spoke a little bit about decaf, and does it necessarily matter which type? So, like, if we’re using instant coffee or if we’re grinding our own beans, does that matter in terms of what potential benefits we could get?

DR. DAVAR: The only data that I really found on the differences of those types of coffee was the amount of caffeine that comes out of them. So, brewed coffee, you know, your normal, stick it in the coffee pot with a filter, usually produce between 80 and 140 milligrams in one sitting. So, like I’d mentioned before, 500 milligrams is the max. So, you’re probably gonna get a lot more caffeine out of a brewed coffee, whereas, an instant coffee is gonna be a little bit less. And then, of course, decaf coffee does actually have caffeine in it, like, 1 to 6 milligrams. So, decaf coffee actually has the lowest amount of milligrams of caffeine but still contains them. And so, if we’re looking at some of the benefits of caffeine intake, it is a stimulant and so it can help a little bit with helping you wake up in the morning, and staying more attentive, and things like that. Those are the only differences that I really saw in those types of preparations. There is one negative side effect of coffee that I think people be aware of and that is something that has to do with discontinuation and withdrawal effects from coffee. So, some people who are avid coffee drinkers do one to two cups of coffee every single day. Don’t miss out on it. They can have headaches. They can feel more irritable, more lethargic, and even have some nausea if they stop drinking cold turkey. So, in a way, maybe there’s some potential addictive effects to caffeine and coffee.

KIM: Interesting. It kind of makes sense because if it’s so much part of your day. And I guess this is another question. So, do we build a tolerance to it if we are having two or three cups every morning? Do we need that kind of baseline and how does that affect -- You said that 500 milligrams is the max for our day, but if you’ve built a tolerance what does that do for your kind of overall day if that makes sense?

DR. DAVAR: I think for most human beings over 500 milligrams is probably still gonna cause a lot of those really bad side effects because it’s still like three to four cups of coffee a day is a lot of coffee at the end of the day.

[Laughing]

So, most people can probably function on a cup or two. I don’t know about tolerance so much as perhaps people kind of adapt to some of the side effects of coffee, the jitteriness, it may be like that. They kind of push through it and they kind of realized that that’s also a tradeoff. But, yeah, I think there are some good evidence to kinda say that -- stay below that amount of caffeine in your body.

KIM: So, while we’re -- In my mind it’s like, “Well, let me ask about some bad habits I’ve had in my life.” So, what would you say if you had a patient that came in and said, “You know what, I don’t really eat breakfast. Coffee is my breakfast.” What would you tell that patient?

DR. DAVAR: So, I actually believed for a long time that coffee had a negative impact on your gut and the fact that you would have more acidity, more reflux, things like that. But what I’m finding more and more is that actually is not true. So, if you want to go ahead and drink a cup of coffee for breakfast and you can get away with it, go for it.

[Laughter]

KIM: That was not what I was expecting you to say. But you know what, I think that validates several years of my life.

[Laughter]

But I do eat breakfast now, but I, for a long time, I liked to just power through and just drink coffee. I would have the ill side effects where, you know, it would be 1:00 p.m. and I’d be real jittery. But it’s interesting to see that as time goes on, I think my tolerance has kind of come down and I have to really put a cap on, “I’m not having any caffeine after noon, otherwise I have problems sleeping or at least I try to.”

DR. DAVAR: Yeah. I think each individual is different. I mean, I’ve known people who can drink a cup of coffee before bedtime. I’ve known people who have gone through all their medical training without drinking one cup of coffee. I don’t understand how that’s possible.

[Laughter]

So, I think each person’s body is individual and different and their biochemistry is gonna respond differently to everything. So, you kinda just have to see what your tolerance is to it before you really make any judgement call on that.

KIM: You know, and I think for a long time I was having coffee for breakfast and then I would really extend my lunch by eating at like at 1:00 or 2:00 which was also probably not very healthy for me. So, do we have any research around the effects that coffee might have on our appetites? Can someone use it as an appetite suppressant or is that just kind of a side effect?

DR. DAVAR: Well, I mean, coffee, like I said, does contain caffeine, and for a very long time and, like, hopefully never again, caffeine pills were prescribed as weight loss pills. And so, there is some thought process there that the stimulant that is caffeine can help to suppress appetite. So, maybe that’s what you could be experiencing. I’m pretty sure that caffeine that we get from a standard brewed coffee does not contain as high of a level as a caffeine pill, but take it with a grain of salt. But…

KIM: Yeah.

DR. DAVAR: I think it’s probably coming from the fact that it is a stimulant, and so, one, you’re gonna be a little bit more productive perhaps throughout your morning and maybe you’re able to kinda convince yourself that you don’t need to eat as much. And then two, on the metabolic side of things, it probably is allowing you to have a little bit of appetite suppression to get you through your morning.

KIM: We’ve talked a lot about coffee and I’m sure we’re very much annoying all of the tea drinkers out there. So, what would you say, does tea have more caffeine or is it coffee, and how do the health benefits kind of stack up between those two?

DR. DAVAR: So, tea is supposed to also contain some antioxidants in it which, you know, anti-aging properties and things like that. However, tea leaves don’t contain the same level of caffeine as coffee does. So, you could probably get away with drinking a little more tea in the day and maybe even later in the day than you could with a cup of coffee.

KIM: If we really wanna see the health benefits that are associated with coffee, are we going to be able to get that if we’re having coffee just once or twice a week or should we really be committed to drinking coffee long term?

DR. DAVAR: So, and most of the data did talk about habitual coffee drinkers because I think any time you’re conducting any kind of research there has to be consistency. And so, maybe there are some benefits to drinking coffee once in a while. But just like taking a medication, or a multivitamin, or a supplement, you do have to be consistent with how often you have exposure to that in order for you to see long term health benefits.

KIM: What did the research actually say? Can it stunt your growth? Is that way I’m only like 5’1?

[Laughter]

DR. DAVAR: No. You can blame your genetics for that.

[Laughter]

KIM: I wanna thank you so much for being with us today, Dr. Davar. I do have one final question though. So, do you drink coffee and if you do, how do you take it?

DR. DAVAR: I most definitely drink a cup of coffee every day, sometimes two. And I have two small children, so I get to get away with that.

[Laughter]

And the answer is usually I drink a cup of coffee with a little bit of oat milk in it and no sugar.

KIM: Thanks again. This has been such a wonderful conversation.

DR. DAVAR: Thank you very much.

[Sound effect plays to signal end of the interview]

ZACH: So, Kim, I learned a lot from this not being a coffee drinker. How did you feel learning all these new facts about coffee?

KIM: Yeah. You know, I was really surprised that she affirmed some of my extremely bad habits from my youth. I used to be a person that would just drink coffee for breakfast. And then coffee for breakfast would turn into like coffee for lunch, and then surprise it’s 6:00 p.m. and I haven’t eaten anything. She didn’t recommend that for our listeners at all, but I’m just sharing my personal anecdote. But she said, you know, if you’re not really a breakfast eater and you wanna have that coffee for breakfast, okay, which really surprised me.

ZACH: So, one of my favorite things about this podcast is when we challenge preconceived notions about things, Kim, and guess what? Decaf coffee has caffeine in it.

KIM: Yeah, that one took me by surprise. You know, I feel much like when we were talking about mocktails and nonalcoholic drinks, and how some of the nonalcoholic beers and wines do contain a little bit of alcohol, it’s kinda like the same thing here. The process can’t extract all of the caffeine. And so, there is a little bit that’s still left in there and which -- I mean, I’m drinking decaf now and I’m feeling really good about myself and how I’m going to sleep well tonight.

[Laughter]

ZACH: No, the habits that people have about it, right? I think the whole, “I can’t start my day without my coffee,” thing, I think that’s where they -- Like, it’s a joke, right? A lot of people say it and most of the time it is. But like if you really feel like you really can’t start your day without your coffee then maybe you’re too dependent on it, right?

KIM: Sure, of course. And, you know, I think it’s important we talk about it all the time here on the podcast about moderation in all things. I feel like I’m getting more moderate in my coffee drinking. On days where I don’t sleep well or I just need a pick me up, I might rely on it more heavily. But I -- On the weekends, I actually don’t drink any coffee at all. Surprisingly, I don’t get headaches which is crazy to me. 

ZACH: You know, you she brought up a point that once you drink caffeine it’s in your system for eight hours.

KIM: Yes.

ZACH: Eight hours. So, when I see people that drink coffee a lot, like yourself, and be like, “Oh, well, you know, it’s getting pretty late. I can’t drink coffee.” I’m like, “Getting pretty late? Can’t drink coffee? Like, why does that matter?” But no, if you drink coffee at, you know, 4:00 p.m. it’s gonna be with you till midnight and then that’s gonna really mess up your sleep pattern, and then guess what? You’re gonna have to drink twice as much coffee the next morning to get you going, right?

KIM: Yeah. It’s a little bit of a vicious cycle, right? I think it was 500 milligrams of caffeine…

ZACH: Mm-hmm. Yes.

KIM: Was what she said.

ZACH: Yes.

KIM: And so, if a cup of coffee has about, like, 95 to 120 milligrams of caffeine and you’re having two or three, like that’s really, like, taking a chuck out of your caffeine intake for the day. So, what are you gonna do later? It’s really made me be a little bit more mindful about when I’m drinking caffeinated drinks. Because usually for myself, I mean, today is an outlier…

[Laughter]

ZACH: Yeah.

KIM: But I tend to like stop my coffee drinking around noon, but then I still might have a pop later in the day or, you know, whatever.

ZACH: Right. A soda pop.

KIM: Yeah. Well, I'm from the Midwest.

ZACH: I know.

[Laughter]

People are like, “A pop of what?” No, no. It’s appropriate that you’re drinking coffee today on our coffee podcast.

KIM: Yeah.

ZACH: Like, I just don’t -- I -- You know, we say this, right? But I know like a thinking about, like, teachers back in the day I had. They would be drinking coffee all day. It’s like 4 o’clock. They’re pouring themselves a cup of coffee. I’m like, “Do you sleep,” -- Maybe they don’t sleep. Maybe that’s the thing, but I get everybody’s body is different as well. So, you’re ea -- It’s gonna react differently to you. But a general rule of thumb is if you don’t wanna be up all night, then don’t be drinking caffeine after a certain point of the day.

KIM: Maybe I’m delusional, but I feel like I don’t have a terrible relationship with my sleep, but that hasn’t always been the case. So, your results may vary and, you know, we all metabolize caffeine differently and I’ve definitely been the person that could take higher dosages before and just be like, “I’m fine.”

ZACH: Yeah.

KIM: And she was not fine.

[Laughter]

ZACH: Alright. Well, that’s gonna do it for this episode of On Health with Houston Methodist. Be sure to share, like, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We drop new episodes Tuesday mornings. So, until next time, stay tuned and stay healthy.