Video: Health Benefits of Coffee

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The health benefits of coffee include decreased platelet aggregation, prevention of dental bacteria, reduced headaches and help with asthma. Learn how some studies show coffee to reduce the risk of Parkinson's disease with information from a licensed dietitian in this free video on healthy nutrition.

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Video Transcript

My name is Christine Marquette and I'm a registered and licensed dietitian with Marquette Nutrition and Fitness and I'm going to talk to you about the benefits of coffee. Coffee has often gotten a bad rep and gotten a bad reputation and a lot of people say oh you shouldn't drink coffee. Well actually there are a lot of health benefits to coffee. Coffee has a lot of antioxidants and even the caffeine content itself with coffee may actually have some health benefits. Vanderbilt University actually has an an institute that studies coffee. They do their own research and they also keep track of studies that are done throughout the world and in their research and in their review of various studies they have found that coffee may help for example with fighting cavities. It has particular compounds in it that can decrease platelet aggregation and it can actually prevent bacteria from sticking to your teeth so it may help reduce dental carries. Another benefit may be with asthma. It may actually help dilate your airways to help you breath better. It can also help dilate your vessels and therefore reduce headaches. So those are a couple of studies that are in the works right now and some of the initial findings are that it can help with asthma and with headaches. Some other findings are that it can actually help with reducing your risk of various cancers because it does have very high antioxidant potential and again those are some things that are in very very preliminary stages. Some of the actual population studies, these are studies where you can't necessarily say coffee is the reason why they are something that has been noticed in people that drink a lot of coffee so they don't know if it is the coffee or if there is some other factor but some of these particular studies actually show a very low risk of Parkinson's in people who drink a lot of coffee, a lot of coffee meaning more than three cups a day. There actually also has been some research showing that drinking coffee helps lower your risk of developing diabetes so those are some very big factors and very big benefits to drinking coffee and some of these have had several studies behind them but Parkinson's and diabetes are two examples where there has been many many studies that have all shown the same thing that people who drink more than two cups of coffee actually have a lower risk of developing Parkinson's and have a lower risk of developing Type 2 diabetes so the only caution with coffee is if you are sensitive to caffeine you may become jittery from drinking too much coffee but if you don't and you are a regular coffee drinker, definitely don't feel bad about drinking it. You can continue to drink your coffee because it does have a lot of health benefits.

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Health Benefits of Coffee

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