The first good reason to drink that java every day is that it will improve your memory. According to the journal Psychological Science, drinking two cups of coffee a day can boost memory, especially in older adults.
Secondly, a study by the Lausanne-based Nestle Research Company in Switzerland suggests that coffee contains a significant amount of health-promoting antioxidants. The study pitted coffee against green tea, which many researchers have touted for its antioxidant content. It turns out that coffee has four times the amount of health-boosting antioxidants as green tea.
Thirdly, researchers at the University of Georgia in the USA, in a recent study exploring why muscles hurt during exercise, found that caffeine reduces muscle pain. The research group previously learned that aspirin, while commonly used to treat muscle pain, did not reduce pain produced by vigorous exercise. “Muscle contractions produce a host of biochemical’s that can stimulate pain. Aspirin blocks only one of those chemicals,” says Patrick O’Connor, professor of exercise science at UGA’s College of Education. “Apparently the biochemical blocked by aspirin has little role in exercise-induced muscle pain.”
But the researcher’s newest study, published in the Journal of Pain, found that caffeine reduced thigh-muscle pain during cycling exercise. Participants in the study cycled for 30 minutes on two separate days. The exercise intensity was the same on both days and set to make the riders’ thigh muscles hurt. Participants took either a caffeine pill or a placebo one hour before the exercise. The riders reported feeling substantially less pain in their thigh muscles after taking caffeine compared to after taking the placebo.
Just remember that caffeine is a stimulant that increases feelings of alertness, but it also acts as a diuretic, increasing fluid loss through the urine. Therefore, quenching your thirst with coffee or a caffeine-based drink after a run doesn’t make sense, since it actually increases your fluid needs.
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I love coffee, I like the smell of freshly brewed coffee, the taste of a perfect cup of coffee, I do with about six cups a day but sadly it has to be decaffeinated coffee as I am sensitive to caffeine and it makes me not to sleep at night.
However, I do take energy gels with caffeine when running but even with the exhaustion of the Two Oceans Ultra I still struggle to sleep afterwards but the caffeine benefits are worth it.