Senior Care 101: Why is Coffee bad for your health?

While I was trying to place an IV on a senior patient of mine, he asked me whether I was a coffee person. I answered him with a yes. The old man just shrugged as I double-checked the IV port protector the second time. He then told me that it was coffee that placed him inside that very hospital. Because of that conversation, I immediately realized that he was blaming coffee for his health problems.

I’m a coffee person. I’ve always loved drinking coffee as far as I can remember. My mom, however, opposes the idea of me being a coffee person, so every morning, she always asks me when I’ll stop drinking coffee. She believes the idea that coffee affect’s a person’s height and that it can also give certain health problems too. Of course, I’d just ignore her or give her a reply that won’t raise an argument between her and me, but there were times when I started asking if coffee does have something to do with people not getting taller or having health problems at all. With this in mind, I went to a good friend of mine, a doctor from a reputable hospital in our city, about the negative side effects of drinking coffee.

It’s a good thing that my friend was accommodating as I talked to her about coffee. But what she told me does make sense. Basically, coffee is indeed bad for your health. It causes heart burn and I have had more cases of heart burn than I can count. Sure, I take medicines but it does costs me and getting painful cramps in the chest is in no way healthy. Asides from heart burns, there’s ulcer. My doctor-friend said that coffee has too much acid that it can actually burn a hole in your stomach or intestines when taken in large quantities.

The effects of drinking too much coffee comes out during old age. Osteoporosis is a condition that happens to more seniors than adults. When someone has osteoporosis, their bones become weak due to lack of calcium. And coffee has that effect on humans; too much coffee can cause calcium loss, thus increasing a person’s risk for osteoporosis later in life. Coffee can also cause heart problems as well as well as diabetes. People who drink coffee with two to three lumps of sugar per day are at high risk of getting the dreaded disease. The patient I was talking about earlier has diabetes.

It was no wonder why everyone had a hard time drawing out blood from him. I always noticed this when I had to change his IV port protector from time to time.

While coffee is a good energy booster, one should never take it all the time. Just like most things, having too much gets kinda bad along the way. And as for my mom, she’s quite happy with my limited coffee intake now. I guess I have to thank my friend for that.

About the Author:

Jessica Greenberg is a caregiver and avid blogger from San Diego, California. Asides from her usual duties, she’s also a content contributor for Ivera Med.

 

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