It depends on who you are and what your overall lifestyle looks like. Like any other food or “superfood,” the benefits of coffee are purely contextual. In some cases, it can contribute to some desirable outcomes. In other cases, it’s futile. Sometimes it can be detrimental.
So, how do you craft a perfect cup of healthy coffee? Doing things like exercising, maintaining a healthy weight, not smoking, and eating plenty of fruits and vegetables can help. These lifestyle choices can enhance coffee’s impact and make it more useful in providing its gifts.
Not “needing a coffee” can also help ensure you’re setting coffee up to your body and mind good. If you can’t focus or stay awake without it, your body is trying to tell you something. Drinking coffee to mask poor sleep habits, brain fog, or depression will likely mean you’re not getting its biggest benefits. You might get the charge from the caffeine, but the lack of sleep or other issues that you’re having are likely snuffing out coffee’s benefits for brain health and inflammation.
Not adding a ton of stuff to your coffee can also help you get a step closer to the perfect cup. Sugars, heavy cream, and flavors can all reduce the health quality of your coffee by adding plenty of empty calories and sugar. This can contribute to weight gain, inflammation, high blood sugar, and metabolic problems.
Lastly, knowing how coffee affects you—how you metabolize caffeine—determines your perfect cup. If it makes you jittery and anxious, drink less or switch to a dark roast. If you can’t drink it in the afternoon because it will impair sleep, don’t have it. Coffee is beneficial if it works into your lifestyle.
So, there you have it: the perfect cup. To get the most from your coffee, understand how it fits into your overall lifestyle, don’t top on too many additives, and listen to your body. If you’re doing those things, living a healthy lifestyle, and limiting intake to a maximum of four cups per day, you’re probably getting all of the benefits a cup of Joe has to offer.