Can You Drink Coffee For Your Health?

Andrew Salisbury

Thanks very much for having me on.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff

Thank you. Thank you. And let’s start by talking first of all, you know, a while ago, there were a lot of studies that actually indicated some problems with coffee. And in those studies, I think have been widely debunked because when they looked at heavy users of coffee, they didn’t control for other factors such as perhaps the other health habits of people who are high coffee drinkers. And so that confounding of information led to some false positive, so to speak around that. Can you let’s start off by telling us a little bit about your background and then maybe we can go into that as a jumping off point, Andrew.

Andrew Salisbury

Yeah. And that’s actually a very good point. A lot of these studies in the 50s doing, look at cigarette smoking or alcohol consumption and obviously what we know now is that would be a big impact. So once they actually sorted with that, most of the findings were benefits, so it would be useful to go into a little bit of background on puree,

Dr. Stephen Sideroff

On you and your interest in this subject.

Andrew Salisbury

Okay. Well, it’s sort of a funny story. I’m originally from the software industry in Latin America. I sold the business in 2011 and we spent some time traveling, my wife and I and daughter and the great trip. Fantastic, amazing time. But when we got back, she started having some health issues. We couldn’t really pinpoint what it was, but she was very low energy and I was a tea drinker. So she was drinking lots of property and I was saying okay, it’s time to give up your coffee. I really think from everything I’ve learned about coffee and the coffee isn’t good for you. Two very resistant to the idea of giving up their coffee. 

And so I met two professors at the Institute of Studies in Vanderbilt and I fully expected them to give me all the arguments that coffee was bad for you and they just gave me a very long shopping list of all the health benefits of coffee. And so I just realized that it’s a little bit more of a deep the question and coffee because you have to look at the quality of coffee and coffee can be very good for help. And so that’s when I started down this journey, really looking at the fact that there’s a product that people do every single day, at least 164 million Americans get out and drink a cup of coffee. And many of them think it’s a guilty pleasure. And it’s really probably one of the healthiest things that you can do. So that’s sort of the disconnect for me

Dr. Stephen Sideroff

And this is an important topic simply because it’s so its use is so prevalent in our country. And yeah, a lot of people have this conception that it’s not good for you in, in, in some way. And you know, we can get into some of the potential dangers of it. But let’s start by looking at some of the positive qualities of coffee that can have a positive impact on health and longevity. One of them is has some role in antioxidant control. Can you say something about that?

Andrew Salisbury

Yeah, the main antioxidants in coffee is being called telegenic acids. And 11 source of telegenic acids and coffee will help the compounds. But what’s interesting about coffee is, it’s the number one source of antioxidants in the American diet, you’re a coffee drinker. So, you know, the important thing to note is so many people drink coffee is a supper. You don’t forget to take, you can do it every single day. And it’s the number one source of antioxidants, mainly because the collagen gasses and really a rich form of antioxidant quality. But also because we do it in a single day without faith. And so if you talk about a high leverage points, the of profit in your dream has a big impact on your overall.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff

And so related to that, one of the kind of foundations of our program has to do with what impacts inflammation. And does coffee have a play a role in reducing inflammation or does it raise inflammation?

Andrew Salisbury

That’s probably one of the biggest advantage is that coffee has and one of the reasons why the health benefits of coffee seems to be just so diverse impacts on the liver, heart prevention of type two diabetes outs language dementia. It means there’s a whole long range of health benefits are associated with good coffee and it just leads to the back, reduces information and free radicals in the body. And so reduction of information is possibly linked to prevention of disease. And so that’s possibly one of the biggest health benefits of there.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff

And I guess this is a good point in our conversation to talk about dose response. And so, you know, some people just have one cup of coffee in the morning or one or two or some people have as many as five or more cups a day. How many cups would you say you need to, to really get the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory benefit of coffee?

Andrew Salisbury

Yeah, we have, we’re lucky to have our advisory board, Dr. Sanjiv Chopra, whose last name recognition to Harvard Med school and the liver surgeon. And he gets this question all the time. He keeps having the same answers is probably really, isn’t. People say, yeah, everything in moderation. That’s the nice thing about coffee. Sure. It’s 50 but everything in moderation and he feels like it’s dose dependent. In other words, the more you drink, the more your body can deal with the potential impact of property, the better it is for your overall health. And this is where the conversation gets a little bit interesting. The problem is there’s positive compounds in coffee and there’s negative compounds and coffee. The reactions that we typically feel from coffee, typically negative compounds that can be sourced for roasted. A way of making sure that there’s nothing prevalent in the end. So coffee can be very good, but it needs to be, you need to pay attention to your body and just see how everybody reacts because some people are fast metabolizing caffeine something with slow metabolizes, which means that, you know, we’ve all had that experience where, you know, somebody could bring a couple of double expresso 11 o’clock at night and go to sleep like a baby, somebody else at two o’clock in the afternoon that affects their sleep. So your individual, the way your wife is going to be how much coffee you can comfortably.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff

Yeah. So let’s take a look at some of those potentially negative consequences. I know they range from, you know, anxiety, insomnia, perhaps digestive issues. And of course, addiction. Can you speak on, on this in terms of the downside of coffee drinking and, and put that, put that in the context of our conversation.

Andrew Salisbury

One of the unintended benefits of us making every decision based on health is we’ve got a lot of anecdotal information from 28,000 testimonials now, so far 29,000 testimonials that this is a coffee. Our coffee is one we can drink, but I’m not saying that just as an advertising for our coffee is the fact that there’s certain the compounds in coffee, which if you pay attention to when you’re sourcing for that coffee, you can completely remove the bad concept. So in other words, jitters, nervousness, acid reflex, anxiousness are all a result of bad quality profit. They’re not a result of profit itself. They’re often results of things like pesticide residue, heavy metals in soil micro toxins that can occur in coffee at different stages in the process. Even coffee that’s been left after roasting maybe 2030 days, you’re starting to see see lancet build up on the beams and people are very sensitive to that and cut a long story short. If you have really good quality coffee that’s fresh and roasted for help, they maximized it for help. It can be very good for you without side effects.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff

So Andrew, you mentioned certain toxins that might be in coffees. Can you expand on that? What might be in the typical coffee? And then is it good for having a coffee that’s organic, for example? And in general, can you indicate what you want to be avoiding in the coffee, particularly for people drinking it on a regular basis and what you want to make sure you include?

Andrew Salisbury

Yeah. So our focus was we’re going to make every decision based on health without compromise. So the things that really matter starts with the coffee needs to be organic. That’s a very easy five minute decision. Nobody was arguing that pesticides like glyphosate and then their self in and the sort of pesticides that are sprayed on corrupts in Latin America was good for the health. So very quick, it needs to be organic. You also need to find specially great coffee and especially Great coffee means that it has the least amount of defects in the coffee and defects that considered primary defects are all as a result of poor farming practices or practices in terms of the roasting or of the beans. So it needs to be organic, it needs to be especially great coffee. It needs to be grown in its natural environment. So after years and years of testing the chlor a genic acids in coffee, the highest when you’re getting your coffee from organic regenerative farms. So we look for certain labels. One of those labels is Smithsonian bird friendly, not because it’s not because we’re focused on wildlife. And while we do care about the planet, are focused on Smithsonian bird friendly is that would give us a lead to show that the coffee was grown in its natural habitat because the Smithsonian Institute tracks the amount of shade trees and the cover and that sort of thing so that migratory birds would land on your coffee plants. 

Whereas with industrial farming, you’ve just got tractors and rows and rows of coffee and tractors going between it to harvest the coffee. So organic specialty grade, it needs to be grown in its natural environment. It needs to be tested for mold, pesticides, heavy metal. We’re looking for things like micro toxins which come from the mold because the problem with coffee is it can be a relatively dirty farming practice and then you’re shipping the coffee for months across the ocean. There’s some risks involved in that. So we have to test for those compounds.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff

Andrew. Are you saying that there’s some coffees and coffee companies that do not do all of that testing.

Andrew Salisbury

I think we are probably, I wanna say maybe there’s two or three coffee companies. I know that do, do some basic level of testing the rest stones. And it’s one of my sort of pet peeves, which is, there’s a lot of talk about mycotoxins and molding coffee. It’s one of the easiest things that you can test for. So I would encourage every coffee company and every customer to Ask their coffee company to make sure their coffee is tested to be free of mold. It’s $100 test per container. Everybody should do it. Nobody does. And the reason is because the consumer isn’t asking for that as a result of it, they don’t want to turn back some shipments that maybe wouldn’t have passed.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff

Very interesting, very interesting. And so are you also saying that your process of looking for naturally grown coffee beans? Are you saying that they potentially or actually have higher levels of antioxidants and anti inflammatory compounds?

Andrew Salisbury

Absolutely. So we worked with Dr. Adrian Farrar from the University of Brazil and she’s one of the biggest probably experts on coffee and health in the world. And early on when we started looking at this, we were hoping to find a coffee that was in one particular farm that was high in antioxidants and we would buy up all the supply of that farm. But she educated us pretty quick that the amount of antioxidants vary from crop to crop and harvest to harvest. So, getting a lead or getting a steer to say, you know, we want to have organic, generally farm coffee just puts us in the same sort of realm of what we need. Then we have two lab test coffee against each other for the ones that are highest in antioxidants. And we do a sort of king of the castle. We’re always picking the ones that are highest in antioxidants as our driver. And that can vary tremendously. So it’s one of the big challenges and that is one area that only we do as a coffee company. I don’t have any other coffee company in the world who has their results and testing of claure genic acids and the compounds in their coffee, but it matters a lot. Yeah.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff

Well, all of this is useful information for people who drink coffee on any regular basis. It’s good to be informed about this as well as all the other kind of products and um areas that we are focused on. Does also have provide some brain health benefits.

Andrew Salisbury

There’s lots of large studies both on longevity and also on brain health around coffee. And the one that I sort of focus on the most is the British medical journal did a study around 496,000 people followed over 12 years and they, it was a study where they were looking at various markets and various factors. There was an impact directly in Parkinson’s Alzheimer’s and all forms of mortality in that 10 year period. So, you were something like, depending on sex, 12 to 16% less likely to die in that 10 year study period if you were drinking 3 to 5 cups of coffee a day. So that sort of leads to the whole endemic, it affects all parts of the system.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff

So, I actually was going to ask you about this study that crossed my desk and maybe it’s the one you’re just talking about because it was a very, very large study of over 400,000 in which they found a correlation between coffee use on the one hand and cardiovascular disease on the other is that the same study,

Andrew Salisbury

It might be a different one. Do you know the should have asked you before what they actually study was? There’s so many. Now, the interesting thing about coffee is there’s over 25,000 studies on coffee and health. It’s probably studied food on the planet. So, you know, we’re in a very solid shape with that.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff

Well, this one found that people that drank more coffee had Greater benefit. I don’t remember if it was 20 or 30% decrease in, in likelihood of getting some kind of cardiovascular issue.

Andrew Salisbury

The studies that I’ve seen typically range from, as you said, 25 to 40% for those people who are drinking 3 to 5 cups of coffee a day. And what’s interesting is they’re not actually looking at the quality of coffee that you drink. So, you know, in a lot of these studies, it’s instant coffee or it’s just, you know, Starbucks, it’s just coffee that’s not necessarily focused on the health benefits of coffee. So our big takeaway is that the coffee can be incredibly good for you. And we think that if we pay attention to how it’s sourced and how it’s roasted, we can make it better for you. So already, I think it’s a very good products.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff

Well, some of the side effects such as insomnia, anxiety probably are more linked to the caffeine aspect of the coffee. Do you get the same benefits when you drink decaf as regular?

Andrew Salisbury

The answer is, I think, first of all, it depends on how that is decaffeinated. So there’s four main methods of decaffeinated coffee. There’s a solution, the caffeine ation, which is like ethyl acetate, which is putting a chemical on the coffee. And the problem is that leaches away a lot of the antioxidants in, in the coffee. So you’re getting maybe 40-50% less antioxidants. So if we do everything right, and then we decaffeinated coffee using that process, then we’re losing a lot of the benefit. We only use Swiss water process. Another method which is very effective is critical CO2, which is also good. But environmentally, we chose Swiss water just because in terms of shipping, we would have to ship to Germany and back. And we just felt like that was going to create too much of a of environmental footprint. And we didn’t see any benefits in terms of the health benefits. So, and what’s interesting in this, this study with the British medical journal, when they look To the 498,000 people, they actually did a test at the end to see where the people who are fast metabolizes caffeine or slow metabolizing of caffeine had any impact on their longevity. And the idea was look, if you’re a fast metabolism of caffeine, it goes quickly through your system and therefore, you can have less benefit in terms of longevity than if you’re a slow metabolizing caffeine. And they noticed no difference whatsoever. So the health benefits of coffee don’t really come from the caffeine with the only disclaimer that I would say in neurological diseases like Parkinson’s has been a linked to caffeine being helpful.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff

Can you say more about that potential protection against Parkinson’s disease with coffee?

Andrew Salisbury

It seems to only be before Parkinson’s develops and it seems to be more highly linked to the caffeine in the coffee than any other compounds. And so we all know the impacts of coffee, we feel more alert, we feel more focused. And I think that’s the main benefit is it’s neural protective caffeine is neuro protective in terms of in terms of brain. And you know, so that’s

Dr. Stephen Sideroff

Okay. And you also mentioned some potential benefit with regard to the liver, you say something about that.

Andrew Salisbury

Yes. So the liver is probably the most well supported health benefit the coffee shown to help with. So as we mentioned, Sanjeev Chopra is a liver surgeon and I’ll quote him directly when he says in 35 years of a liver surgeon, he’s never seen anybody with end stage liver disease who drinks 3-5 cups of coffee a day. He said with every cup from the baseline, you have a 20% lower chance of ever developing liver cirrhosis, fatty liver or end stage liver disease for every cup you drink from the baseline. So if you drink two cups and you move to three, you get 40% protective effect, moving to 60%. And this is, you know, so this is something that I know he speaks to doctors sometimes 6000 plus dot Doctors and he talks to them about the health benefits of coffee. And he says even today, most of these doctors are sheepish about the idea that they drink a lot of coffee. And he’s saying it is the number one thing that you should be doing to prevent the risk of liver problems. Now, alcohol has its own set of problems that comes with it. But in terms of protecting the liver coffee is shown to be one of the healthiest things you can drink.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff

Very interesting. And so again, back to the study that I had read on the one hand, it talked about, I think they studied up to five cups a day or reported on up to five cups a day having benefits. But then their conclusion was too that they recommended between two and three cups a day. Do you have any comments on quantity dose, things like that?

Andrew Salisbury

I think it goes back to what we talked about originally, which is that, that unfortunately, coffee can be a bit of a balancing act. The positive compounds in coffee, the antioxidants, the claure genic acids are all beneficial. The negative compounds, pesticide residue and mycotoxins and stale coffee and some of these problems cause inflammation in the body. So I think after a certain level, you’re sort of, you’ve got your battling against the fact that the negative compounds are battling the positive compounds. And so we don’t know this for a fact and we’re gonna be doing testing on this. But what we believe is that if we can remove the bad qualities in coffee and increase the good qualities in coffee, then it’s much likely to be much more likely to be healthy for you to drink more coffee because there’s nothing in coffee itself that should be you know, you should stop drinking effectively apart from the sensitivity, caffeine.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff

Yeah. And you know, I would say that probably a good percentage of people who drink coffee in the morning. One of the things that they’ve discovered and whether either discovered or it’s the reason they continue to drink coffee is because it, it enhances their cognitive awareness and performance. So it’s interesting, it’s interesting, it’s sort of like the drug of choice. We can, we can say it’s, it’s a substance that actually impacts brain function in, in that regard positively. So with very little down downside as well.

Andrew Salisbury

Yeah, we think it could be made better. I mean, I think the interesting thing about coffee is that, that coffee that is good for health is also grown in a way that’s good for the environment and just concentrating on the compounds in coffee and concentrating on the avoiding, avoiding the bad things and maximizing the good things in coffee means that I think we can actually improve the quality of coffee for help.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff

So if someone is wanting when they go to the store to choose a coffee that maximizes the positive benefits while is eliminating some of these toxins and chemicals that can impair the experience in one way or another. Is this information on the labels of coffee or how does a person figure that out?

Andrew Salisbury

Not really? And it’s actually the reason why it was so frustrating to me in the early stage, in the early stage, I wanted to find out great what coffee can I buy? My wife that deals with these health benefits? And they could give me a list of the things that I should look for, which is what I give you now. But they couldn’t tell me one specific brand that I should look for. So that’s one of the reasons we started down this path. But I often use this sort of, my wife was on a trip and she couldn’t have purity coffee. What coffee should she look for? She should find the best specialty roaster she should find. So you want to have the coffee that’s fresh, you want it to be organic if possible. I mean, that would probably be a minimum requirements, especially great fresh coffee. And you wanted to roast it at a medium level. 

The thing about roasting coffee is think of it like a roast curb. In the beginning of roasting coffee, you create a negative compound called acrylamide which is possibly carcinogenic. And you get there with most sort of like toast and fries and that sort of thing. The later stage of roasting, you create a thing called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, phs, which also come from any burnt food. And in the middle, you’ve got a curve that goes down of antioxidants where it starts high and then you roast away all the antioxidants. The big challenge when you’re buying coffee out is these big chains like to make sure that the coffee you taste in Singapore taste the same way as the coffee in Seattle. And the very best way to do that is to over roast the coffee. 

So you’re roasting away a lot of the antioxidants, but you’re getting a uniform taste. And so that’s sort of one of the things to look for. You want to be on the lighter side of the road. And if possible, and I think this would be difficult to find, you’d like that coffee to be tested for mold and mycotoxins and heavy metals. If you can’t find that, which was pretty difficult, you should at least get organic specialty grade coffee, medium roast and it needs to be fresh.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff

Got very, very good advice. Well, this has been very interesting talking about a subject that I think most people listening to this summit have a personal interest in. And so it’s good to know that for the most part, you can be drinking coffee, it could be healthy for you. And there’s very little downside of that as well. Any final comments you want to say on the subject, Andrew.

Andrew Salisbury

I would just say that generally it’s one of these very small adjustments that you can make. I mean, whether it’s our coffee or another coffee that, that, that you’re looking for, improve the quality of a product that you do every single day. I mean, you know, it starts with coffee. Then I think it’s eggs is the second most consumed product in the U S diet. So, if you’re doing it every single day, a small adjustment is valuable and, you know, I would just say pay attention to that. And I also feel like the coffee that is grown in a way that’s good for health can be good for the environment and there’s going to be more and more conversations about that. I know it’s not your area of specialty. We’re not talking about here, but I think it’s very important that coffee is seen in the medicine, food, is medicine and that also that climate change is something that we can have an impact of and it’s going to affect coffee and it’s going to affect the quality of coffee. So we need to grow the coffee in a way that’s good for the environment.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff

Well, I couldn’t agree with you more. And again, Andrew, thank you so much for this informative talk on, one of the most commonly used products in our country and other, other countries as well. So thank you again. And before we close, do you have any kind of a pamphlet on this subject that people listening in can avail themselves on?

Andrew Salisbury

Yeah, we’ll have something downloadable on our site with this, the code that you’re going to be putting up and they’re welcome to look at all the details about what we, what we do definitely in terms of process and what we would encourage them to ask their coffee companies to do when it comes to the new process.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff

Very good. Thank you very much and thank you again for the conversation.

Andrew Salisbury

My pleasure. Thank you.