Want To Slim Down? Your Daily Cups Of Coffee May Help
Can coffee help to keep you slim? Surprisingly, the answer may actually be 'yes'. Read on to find out more.
For every study saying coffee is good for you, there’s another study saying it’s bad for you. But the latest news is that regularly drinking a cup of coffee may help you lose weight.
Your body contains two types of fat - white fat and brown fat. White fat is the kind you want to lose, because it can be bad for your health, especially if it gathers around your midsection.
Adipose tissue, or brown fat is good, because it keeps your body insulated. It takes an enormous amount of energy to burn brown fat to stay warm. Many slim people have a relatively high proportion of brown fat, while overweight people tend to have less brown fat.
Brown fat burns sugar and other fats to generate heat and is normally only activated when your body is cold. But a study from the School of Medicine at Nottingham University in the UK has looked at what happens to brown fat when you drink a cup of black coffee.
The scientists used thermal imaging to look at brown fat in the necks of volunteers. They checked the brown fat before and after the volunteers drank a cup of black coffee. They could see that the brown fat was “activated” by the coffee, and became hotter - which means it was burning calories.
It takes a lot of calories to burn brown fat, so the increased calorie burn may help weight loss.”Our study shows that black coffee stimulates the activity of brown fat, ‘ says Professor Michale Symonds, who co-directed the research. “This has the potential to help increase your weight loss. Brown fat contains a special protein called an ‘Uncoupling protein’. When this protein is activated, the brown fat burns more calories. Brown fat burns a lot of calories - it produces approximately 300 times more heat per gram compared to any other tissue in the body.” So in theory, if we can switch on more brown fat in our body, we can burn more calories.
The coffee does not need to be a fancy blend either - for the research the scientists used a variety of cheap coffee brands from the supermarket. “Activating brown fat could potentially be part of the solutions to losing weight. One cup a day should work,” says Professor Symonds. But he adds. “We have not checked if adding milk to coffee changes the effect.”.
The researchers point out that brown fat is only activated for a short time after drinking coffee. Plus, no-one is exactly sure how much brown fat you need to burn to lose weight.
Professor Symonds says, “We all have some brown fat and there is less in people who are overweight. So reduced brown fat function is likely to contribute to excess weight. But we have yet to discover if we can increase the amount of brown fat you have in your body, or increase its activity, long term.”
So can you drink more than one cup of coffee and burn even more calories? That’s not how it works. Caffeine does suppress the appetite slightly, but it has side effects. Most experts say healthy adults can drink 400 milligrams of coffee (or less) a day. This is about four cups a day. But too much caffeine might cause nervousness, insomnia, nausea, increased blood pressure, and other problems.
And keep in mind that some caffeinated drinks can be high in calories and fat. Kopi C (or coffee with evaporated milk and sugar) is 87 kcal a glass, so kopi kosong is a better bet. A regular-sized cup of classic milk bubble tea is 212 calories while an iced frappe coffee with topping can weigh in at 370 calories. That’s the same calories as a plate of fried bee hoon.
Even if you’re not looking to lose weight, coffee can have other health benefits. A recent study identified compounds in the drink that may inhibit prostate cancer in men.
Two compounds found in coffee may also help brain health. Scientists at Rutgers University found that the combination of coffee and a compound found in the coating of coffee beans can team up to protect against brain degeneration. Other studies have found that coffee may reduce the chance of Parkinsons and Alzheimers.
Even looking at something that reminds you of coffee can help your brain feel more alert, according to a study done at the University of Toronto. So maybe there’s something useful in those artsy photos of coffee cups you see on social media.
Bauer syndication