Instant Expert: If you love caffeine, hug a goat

Some might say that coffee is the only good thing about mornings.

Coffee by any other name — like battery acid, brain juice, Brewtus, cup of Joe, day-starter, go juice, java, jitter juice, liquid lightning, morning thunder, mother's little helper, rocket fuel, or wakey juice — is still a caffeine-carrying beverage.

Two thirds of Canadian adults drink coffee every day and 80 per cent of them have a coffee at least once a day. Does this surprise anyone?

When I see the early morning lineups that spill out on the streets, I would have to agree with those numbers. They're all looking for their brewed awakening.

Hello there you gorgeous coffee bean, just how did you make your way into my life?

How the goat got a spring in its step

Here is coffee's "bean-eology" laid out for you! Thousands of years ago, in the Ethiopian highlands, a goat herder named Kaldi had his flock of goats grazing. 

Kaldi noticed that after his goats ate berries from a certain tree they became energized and did not want to sleep at night. Can you guess that name of that plant? It was the coffee plant!

Kaldi reported this to the local monastery and the abbot made a drink out of these coffee berries that kept him awake well into the night for his long hours of evening prayer. The abbot shared this information with the other monks and the news of these amazing and energizing berries spread far and wide.

In the 15th century, coffee was grown on the Arabian Peninsula. The first public coffee houses were called qahveh khaneh — which does not translate to "Starbucks." The popularity of these coffee houses was off the hook and these social meeting places were often referred to as "Schools of the Wise."

It was like the coffee beans had sprouted legs and were travelling all around the world. By the 17th century, coffee made its way to Europe. Some were suspicious and fearful of this new beverage, calling it the "bitter invention of Satan."  By the time coffee got to Venice in 1615 the local clergy condemned it.

A papal intervention

It was so controversial that Pope Clement VIII was asked to intervene. He had to taste this evil brew for himself. He put the cup up to his lips, tasted it and he loved it. Two papal thumbs up and coffee was given papal approval.

(I think that when the papal decree was translated from Latin, it said something like "it's good to the last drop.")

Now just because coffee was given papal approval in Italy, did not mean that coffee had it made. In 1746 the government of Sweden banned all of coffee's trappings. Police were sent door to door and confiscated all the coffee cups in town.

And King Gustav III had a unusual punishment for convicted murderers. Death by coffee. 

He ordered convicted murderers to drink coffee as doctors monitored how long the cups of coffee took to kill them. All the coffee you can drink until you die, was that really a punishment?  As a point of information and please do not try this at home, but drinking 100 cups of coffee will kill you.

I'm no neuroscientist ...

Now, you may wonder, how does caffeine work? I'm no neuroscientist but after a few cups of Joe I can explain just about anything.

Caffeine is a naturally occurring chemical stimulant and is in fact the most widely used brain stimulant in the world. It is used today as it has been for generations, to give you that boost of energy and the feeling of being more alert.

This is how I have gleaned that brain chemistry and caffeine work. Your natural tiredness comes from a molecule produced in your body as it goes through the day called adenosine.

When you sleep, adenosine declines which then you feel like waking up. The adenosine builds up during the day and the sleepier you feel.

Your morning coffee will hijack that process because caffeine resembles adenosine to your brain cells. Caffeine is a doppelganger for adenosine and it will latch onto the adenosine receptors in your brain.

Once the caffeine is locked down into adenosine rightful, there is no way that adenosine can stick around, and that prevents it from building up and making you sleepy.

The result is you feel awake and more alive, for a little while anyway. Your brain gets smart to all this and will produce more adenosine receptors.

From your coffee to your car

I remember hearing the analogy between how caffeine works and a car. The caffeine is not the gas for your brain, but it does block the brake which is the adenosine, from working.

In the grand scheme of things just how important is coffee? I can't say it makes the world go around but it is the second most traded commodity on earth after oil. Most Canadians have a two cups of coffee every day and we're only the 12th largest consumer of coffee per capita in the world.

The 11 countries ahead of us are all in Europe. (Take that United States!) 

Canada is second only to Italy when it comes to the percentage of cups of coffee consumed away from home.

That is also changing, as one third of Canadian homes now have the single cup brew machines like Keurig and Tassimo, and the out-of-home coffee servings have dropped more than 3 per cent annually over the last couple of years.

And while Newfoundlanders and Labradorians love their cuppa tea, we still drink more coffee by volume. 

If there is one thing that always makes the news, it's the latest studies on coffee. Is it good to drink or is it going to kill you? The latest brew-haha where coffee is concerned is the discovery that caffeine has been found to have some antioxidant properties.

]For this I will need to find an expert who is happy to meet me at a coffee shop.

Oh the perks of this work.

I would like you to meet Dr. Ryan Mailloux, an assistant professor of Biochemistry at Memorial University of Newfoundland. His speciality is in human metabolism, specifically antioxidants and oxygen metabolism. He is very excited about the latest findings on caffeine.

"The fact that new evidence is emerging that it has an antioxidant role and now we have to figure out how it's doing this function. We know that a number of key nutrients are required for antioxidant support throughout the body is directly but they actually support the enzymes are to get rid of oxygen toxicity. The fact that caffeine can do this as well illustrates that it actually might be quite important in the treatment or prevention of a myriad of different disorders."

Some of the disorders or diseases Dr. Mailloux is talking about are heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, liver disorders, and neurological diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

Smell the beans, read the research

Take time to smell the coffee and read the studies!

1. Regular coffee drinkers were 80 per cent less likely to develop Parkinson's disease.

2. Two cups a day reduced subjects' risk for colon cancer by 20 per cent.

3. Two cups a day caused an 80 per cent drop in the odds of developing cirrhosis.

4. Two cups a day cut the risk of developing gallstones in half.

5. Caffeine has benefits in treating asthma

6. It helps stop headaches. 

7. It's mood boosting.

8. It's cavity-preventing

9. It protects against Alzheimer's

10. Exercise and caffeine stopped precancerous skin cells in mice, not yet tested on humans but still some good news for mice.

Drinking too much can kill you!

So let me espresso myself and tell you what I've learned caffeine. While it works differently on everyone, on average it will take anywhere from five to 10 minutes to kick in. Please have your coffee in moderation and remember drinking 100 cups of coffee at a time will kill you.

There are a few little helpers that can boost your caffeine hit. Take a small piece of grapefruit in the morning with your coffee and that will make the caffeine stay in your bloodstream longer. A small amount of sugar will help with the absorption of caffeine as well.

The newest health trend in coffee swaps omega-3-rich grass-fed butter and healthy oils for the standard cream and sugar in your cup of java juice. Look, I love you coffee, and I love you butter, I just don't think that I can love you together. 

There it is, I bean there and I done that. Enjoy!

10 famous coffee drinkers

... and how they stayed, ahem, grounded. 

1. Johann Sebastian Bach loved his coffee so much he wrote an opera about the place of coffee in daily life.

2. Voltaire would drink 40-50 cups of a chocolate-coffee mixture a day

3. Napoleon Bonaparte asked for a teaspoon of coffee while on his deathbed and his autopsy revealed coffee grounds in his stomach.

4. Ludwig Van Beethoven took his coffee with exactly 60 coffee beans and he only drank coffee he made himself.

5. Søren Kierkegaard drank his coffee with 30 sugar cubes which he piled in his cup and then poured the coffee over it

6. Benjamin Franklin- sold his own beans and always travelled with his own coffee supply. Franklin's mother was a Folger, whose family went on to found Folgers Coffee in the 19th century.

7. Teddy Roosevelt drank a gallon of coffee a day with five to seven lumps of sugar, he coined the term, "Good to the last drop" slogan for Maxwell House.

8. L. Frank Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz, liked his coffee strong enough to float a spoon on it without sinking.

9. Margaret Atwood takes her coffee with cream or steamed mild and she's lent her name to Balzac's Coffee Roasters' "Bird Friendly" blend to raise money for Canada's Pelee Island Bird Observatory. The "Atwood Blend" is mild and contains a "supple, caramel finish".

10. David Lynch enjoys four to seven cups a day with plenty of sugar and he says that "even bad coffee is better than no coffee at all"

10 tips for coffee time

1. 400 milligrams of caffeine is a safe amount per day. That's about 4 cups of coffee a day.

2. Does your coffee taste bitter? Add a pinch of salt.

3. Freeze leftover coffee to make ice cubes for your iced coffees or pour milk over for an instant iced latte.

4. Request the lower children's drink temperature at Starbucks so your coffee is cool enough to drink immediately

5. Heat up your mug before adding coffee and it will keep your drink warm for a longer amount of time

6. Don't go cold turkey if you decide to cut down on your caffeine intake. Do it gradually, alternating decaf coffee with your usual cup until you're drinking no more than three cups in any 24-hour period.

7. Spring clean your coffee maker using 1 part white vinegar and 1 part water

8. Coffee grounds are excellent odour removers in your fridge or freezer

9. Take your leftover coffee grounds and compost them

10. Add coffee grounds to your soil to give it nutrients or spread in your garden as a pesticide.