What is the best time to drink espresso

For many people, the day really starts with a cup of coffee. But to maximize its energizing effects, the best time to drink coffee may not be waking up. In fact, there may be advantages to drinking it mid-morning or even later, if the goal is to increase concentration and responsiveness.

Benefits of coffee

Among the many nutritional components of coffee, the best known is obviously caffeine, able to: perform stimulating action on gastric and biliary secretion, and therefore facilitate digestion; stimulate cardiac and nervous function, with consequent energetic effect, useful to counteract, for example, post-prandial drowsiness; promote weight loss. Caffeine has a lipolytic effect, that is, it stimulates the use of fats for energy purposes and thermogenesis, increasing the amount of calories burned by the "man machine"; decrease the sense of hunger.

Coffee has now become a necessity for many people, especially at first light. A habit that, according to some recent studies, brings some problems to those who take it in the morning: according to research results, taking coffee in the morning leads to decrease the effect of caffeine bringing both a decrease in long-lasting benefits and people to tolerate it more.

Our bodies produce a hormone called cortisol, also referred to as the stress hormone, which tends to appear just when we are stressed or when we are afraid. In addition to this, however, it turns out to be a key component of the hormonal cycle, known as the circadian clock: it helps us wake up in the morning and makes us relax during the night. Simply put, the more cortisol is released, the more awake we feel.

According to the popular science channel YouTube ASAP Science, two problems arise when we take caffeine during the morning: first of all, it tends to interfere with the production of cortisol, so the body produces less of it and relies more on it. Secondly, drinking coffee when cortisol levels are high leads to developing some tolerance to caffeine, which is why many drinkers claim that coffee has less effect on them.

The advice, therefore, is not to ingest coffee early in the morning, in the middle of the day and in the evening, moments in which cortisol increases: this appears to have its peaks from 6:00 to 10:00, in particular between 8:00 and 9:00. Best enjoy the benefits of caffeine between 10:00 and noon and after lunch, between 14:00 and 17:00. In such hours, in fact, coffee does not interfere with the mechanism by which the body remains awake.

Coffee does not seem to be so harmful to our body at all. According to new research published in the journal Heart, drinking 3 to 5 cups of coffee a day would lead to a reduced risk of having a heart attack. The study, specialized in cardiology, was on a sample of 25 thousand people and the results speak for themselves: those who drank more than three coffees a day had more "purified" arteries than others.

The researchers, in checking patients, checked for calcium in the coronary arteries (first sign of clogged arteries and propensity to heart disease). Thus, they were divided into three groups: the first consume less than one coffee a day, the second from one to three while the third from three to five. Paradoxically, this last group seems to have the lowest level of calcium in the arteries. To conclude, the researchers state: "Our study adds some evidence to the fact that coffee consumption may be inversely associated with heart disease risk."