Coffee Is Much More Than Caffeine
By Editorial Staff
Most of us think of caffeine as the ingredient that makes coffee "work." But coffee contains hundreds of other compounds, and new research suggests some of them may interact with the bacteria living in your gut, with possible effects extending all the way to the brain.
Researchers recruited healthy adults ages 30-50, including regular coffee drinkers and people who didn't drink coffee. The coffee drinkers normally consumed three to five cups a day. They were asked to give up coffee for two weeks and then spend three weeks drinking either caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee.
Researchers tracked far more than whether participants missed their morning cup. They analyzed their gut bacteria and metabolites (substances produced when the body and gut microbes process food and beverages), while also measuring mood, stress, memory and other aspects of mental performance.
Coffee left a recognizable fingerprint. Regular coffee drinkers had differences in specific types of gut bacteria compared with non-coffee drinkers. When they stopped drinking coffee, some of those differences changed; when coffee returned, the microbiome responded again. And here's the surprise: Some of the changes occurred with both regular and decaf coffee.
That points beyond caffeine to coffee's other components, including naturally occurring plant compounds called polyphenols. The researchers also found connections among coffee-related metabolites, gut bacteria and measures of mood and cognition.
Decaf was particularly interesting: participants drinking it showed improvements in several memory measures, along with better reported sleep quality and physical activity. Regular coffee produced some different effects, including improvements in anxiety and certain measures of attention and stress coping.
The bigger message may be that your morning coffee isn't simply delivering a jolt of caffeine. It's introducing a complex collection of natural compounds into an equally complex community of microorganisms living inside you. And whether your cup is regular or decaf, your gut appears to notice.
