With almost 100 million of them imbibed in the UK each morning, it’s fair to say we’re a nation of coffee addicts. The good news is that there’s growing evidence to suggest that coffee is actually pretty good for us in moderation.
If you rely it for your get-up-and-go, just love the flavour, or it gives you some kind of comfort as you get going with your day, there’s no shame in it. Just be sure to stop drinking it somewhere between 10 and 12 hours before bedtime to ensure the caffeine doesn’t keep you up at night.
As to how best to have your coffee, it’s largely up to personal preference. If you can bear to have it without sugar then that’s obviously a good call health-wise, and you might imagine that neat black coffee is the best option.
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The I Paper reckons 87% of coffee drinkers go for black coffee in some form, but experts say this could be suboptimal for your health if you down one on an empty stomach.
Dr Myutan Kulendran, an upper GI surgeon from King Edward VII’s Hospital, told the I Paper that ‘coffee itself is acidic, and the increase in acid in the stomach can also cause reflux’.
With that in mind, you might want to reconsider how you have your coffee in the morning.
Heartburn and acid reflux aren’t just uncomfortable, they can also cause nastier conditions over time like oesophogeal cancer, so it’s best avoided if possible. According to Tom Sanders, professor emeritus of nutrition and dietetics at King’s College London (KCL), ‘coffee, particularly black coffee, is a well-known gastric irritant. It stimulates gastrin secretion which increases acid secretion. People with acid reflux problems are generally advised to avoid drinking it on an empty stomach’.
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You can mitigate this effect by eating something filling before having your first coffee, and there’s evidence to suggest that coffee works best when you’ve been awake for about an hour already. With that in mind, you could squeeze a breakfast into that first hour of your day, not only helping to curb the heartburn and acid reflux but also ensuring the caffeine has its desired effects.
However, that’s not to say that drinking coffee immediately after getting up is inherently a bad idea.
“There really is no evidence that I’m aware of in the literature that says [coffee first thing] is in any way, shape or form, bad for you,” said Kim Elaine Barrett, vice dean for research and distinguished professor of physiology and membrane biology at the UC Davis School of Medicine, per the I Paper.
“I think it’s fair to say that if you’re caffeine sensitive, coffee first thing is not a good idea. But millions of people do have a cup of coffee first thing without having eaten anything, and it has no adverse effect on them. The most common thing that people say is that it gives them some heartburn or gastric comfort. But even that is addressable.”
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She continues: “Any time you put anything in your stomach, it’s going to initiate a reflex to secrete more acid into the stomach. So if you don’t have any other food there to buffer it, you are at risk for heartburn. But it’s not really going to do anything negative to the stomach itself, because the stomach secretes a lot of mucus that’s a protective blanket over the surface of the stomach.”
Rachael Davis