“People who drink four or more cups of coffee a day – it doesn’t matter whether it is caffeinated or decaffeinated – have a reduction in Type 2 diabetes, or a reduced incidence of Type 2 diabetes, of about fifty percent. The same with Parkinson’s, although there it is more related to the caffeine,” stated Gregory Stock, the former director of the Program on Medicine, Technology and Society at UCLA’s School of Medicine, on brainyquote.com.

Caffeine can be found in certain plants, such as coffee beans, tea leaves, and cocoa nuts. Can also be man made, according to www.nytimes.com.  According to www.medicalnewstoday.com, caffeine can be found in teas, soft drinks, energy drinks, and chocolate.

Caffeine is a substance that helps your body get rid of fluids. It also has the ability to stimulate, or excite, the brain and nervous system. Caffeine has no real beneficial use, but many people use it in coffee or energy drinks to relief drowsiness. According to www.nytimes.com, side effects of consuming caffeine are a fast heart rate, anxiety, depression, headache, difficulty sleeping, nausea, restlessness, vomiting, urinating more often, and tremors. The University of Michigan Health Service stated that the side effects of caffeine can start as early as 15 minutes after being consumed and can last for almost 6 hours.

Though drinking caffeine does have appalling side affects, there are a few possible benefits. Last year, Medical News Today reported on a study suggesting that drinking at least three cups of coffee a day may reduce the risk of liver cancer by 50%, while another study suggests that drinking four cups a day could lower the risk of mouth and throat cancer in half, reported medicalnewstoday.com.

According to the International Coffee Organization, about 1.6 billion cups of coffee are drunk each day around the world. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) stated that each person in the US drink about two to four cups (300 milligrams) per day, according to www.medicalnewstoday.com. A postdoctoral research fellow at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, named Steven E. Meredith, told Medical News Today that many people that consume caffeine forget that this substance is psychoactive, a drug that crosses the blood-brain barrier to stimulate the nervous system.

“Unlike most other psychoactive substances, caffeine use is socially acceptable, and the drug is widely used. In fact, caffeine is the most commonly used psychoactive substance in the world. These factors likely contribute to the perspective that caffeine is a benign substance that everyone can use without suffering any negative consequences,” said Meredith. According towww.medicalnewstoday.com, he said that people with anxiety issues are more likely to anxiogenic side effects.

 “But we should be mindful that when we consume caffeine, we are consuming a psychoactive substance that can cause or exacerbate some health problems,” reported Meredith.