- Man, I love coffee.
Tastes so good and makes me feel good.
But is it good for me?
Huh.
Hey, Jess!
You're basically a scientist.
Is coffee good for me?
- Well, Joe, you're about to find out!
'Cause we're gonna science the (bleep) out of it.
- Nice.
(funky bass music)
Let me tell you what's happening in my brain
before I drink coffee.
- Okay.
- Life sucks.
What's my middle name, shoe size, last name?
Oh my god I want some coffee.
So I drink it, and I'm like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Caffeine is the most popular psychoactive
drug in the world.
And the way most people get it
is through coffee.
When you drink the coffee, the caffeine
actually hijacks your brain.
There are receptors in your brain
meant for a chemical called Adenosine.
And Adenosine is what actually makes you feel tired,
but when you drink caffeine, the caffeine
takes control of those receptors,
and doesn't leave any room for the Adenosine,
and that's why you feel alert.
So how many cups do you drink during the day?
- Let's see.
I would say on average probably like,
between five and eight.
- You should be drinking no more than 400 milligrams.
- Which is what, 400 cups?
- (laughs)
No, depending on, 'cause each cup is different
in terms of how much caffeine is in it,
- Okay - But ...
- Wait, I'm sorry, 400 milligrams
of caffeine - Of caffeine.
The FDA recommends no more than 400 milligrams
of caffeine a day.
There's about 142 milligrams of caffeine
in this 12 fluid ounce coffee mug.
So that's about three mugs a day.
- Okay, but so what if I have more than that?
One thing that I'm always worried about
when drinking coffee,
'cause lots of times I'll be drinking,
and I'll feel like my heart like just going
like super fast, and I automatically think,
oh my god, I'm gonna die from drinking coffee.
Is it possible that I could actually
drink so much coffee that I die?
And how can I find out how much will kill me?
And, so I can drink just a little bit less.
- (laughs)
So it's not necessarily drinking too much coffee
that's gonna kill you.
It's the caffeine in the coffee that's gonna kill you.
There was a study that showed that
if you drank 12 highly caffeinated energy drinks
within a few hours, you would most likely die.
So Joe, is that coffee filtered?
- It is.
- That's actually healthier for you.
- Ha ha, yeah!
- Coffee contains over 1,000 compounds.
Some of those compounds are healthy antioxidants,
but there's something else in coffee
that according to one study,
can actually raise your cholesterol levels.
But if you drink filtered coffee,
the filtering process actually prevents
those cholesterol-raising compounds
from reaching your cup.
- According to something I read online,
caffeine affects your sleep,
and you need a good like five hours
to get it out of your system.
- It should be more like six hours.
Because the half life of caffeine
is about six hours.
So it'll take six hours for your body
to metabolize 50% of the caffeine in there.
So basically then that means if you have
a cup of coffee at 8 a.m., you're still gonna have
25% of the caffeine that was in that coffee
in your system by 8 p.m.
- (bleeped)
So for the average viewer who's watching this
and probably drinks coffee but not
as much coffee as I drink,
is coffee good for you or not?
- The overall consensus is yes.
- Aha!
- According to the latest scientific research,
coffee can reduce your risk of
certain cancers, like liver and uterine cancer.
- Nice.
- And reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease.
- Nice.
- Type 2 diabetes.
- Nice.
- And possibly reduce your risk of Alzheimer's Disease.
- N-n-nice.
- And so yeah, overall coffee is relatively good for you.
- Hell yeah. Cancer-free, sharp brain, plenty of energy,
terrible breath, sorry by the way.
We weren't supposed to- we didn't know we were gonna
stand this close.
So conclusion, coffee is the (bleep).
- You should probably stop drinking
when you get older.
Because drinking coffee within the first hour,
it can actually raise your blood pressure.
- Like in the day?
- Within the first hour of drinking.
- Okay.
- Yeah.
- I'm probably not gonna do that.
- (laughs)