Coffee- Good or Bad?

Coffee is a contentious topic in the health industry (is it good for you? Is it bad?).

What is clear is that Australians love coffee! It is ingrained in our culture with roughly 61.5% of Australian adults in 2025 consuming coffee each day (Food Standards Australia and New Zealand, 2025).

But what makes coffee "good'' or ''bad'' for you? Why does it affect individuals differently?

Anti-inflammatory benefits of coffee

First up (and its good news!) coffee itself (black, freshly ground organic) is rich in polyphenols and is anti-inflammatory (Abalo, 2021). It is the ingredients it is served with that can be inflammatory- the sugar and milk. Sugar and milk is fine in moderation, however if your diet is high in other added sugars- reducing your sugar intake in coffee may be the first step to reduce systemic inflammation.

Hormones and coffee intake on an empty stomach

Are you "never hungry'' in the morning? Is coffee your only "breakfast"? You could be setting yourself up for a day of energy crashes, headaches and poor sleep later that night.

Coffee intake significantly impacts hormone levels by stimulating the adrenal glands to increase cortisol, adrenaline, and noradrenaline (Schliep et al., 2012). When drinking coffee on an empty stomach in the morning (skipping breakfast all together for coffee) acutely, it can cause headaches, anxiety, restlessness and energy crashes. Regular, high consumption on an empty stomach can lead to chronically elevated cortisol, which may interfere with sleep, induce anxiety, and disrupt ovulation (Schliep et al., 2012).

How to reduce these effects? Eat a protein rich, nutrient dense breakfast before or with coffee such as 2 eggs on sourdough toast with half an avo!

Genetics role in coffee metabolism

Each individual has different genetic ability to metabolise caffeine (Low et al., 2024). You may know of a friend or family member who can drink a cup of coffee at 9pm and be able to fall asleep at 10pm, but when you have a coffee after 12pm, you will be awake until 3am! This is due primarily to variations in the CYP1A2 gene (a producer of liver enzyme CYP1A2) which produces a liver enzyme responsible for breaking down over 95% of caffeine (Popa et al., 2025). So you are either a fast or slow metaboliser (or somewhere in the middle!). This is the difference in how long caffeine stays in the body and how your body uses and processes it.

If you love drinking coffee but it keeps you up at night? You may have to reevaluate what your cut off time is to drink coffee. You may have to switch to non-freeze dried decaf if you can't go without a coffee in the afternoon.

If decaf coffee isn't for you and you need an energy boost in the afternoon? You many need a Naturopath consultation to assess why you crash in the afternoons.

Medication effects on coffee metabolism

Certain medications such as the oral contraceptive pill can impair caffeine metabolism by doubling its half life (how quickly a medication is broken down and removed [eliminated] from the body) (Grzegorzewski et al., 2022). This causes higher, longer-lasting serum caffeine concentrations, resulting in increased sensitivity to the stimulant (Grzegorzewski et al., 2022). Meaning the side effects (such as Jitteriness, anxiety, reduced sleep onset) of consumption are increased and sustained.

Caffeine will not make the oral contraceptive pill less effective.

You may need to reduce your daily intake of coffee and drink it earlier in the day (with food!) to reduce the side effects of caffeine.

References

Abalo R. (2021). Coffee and Caffeine Consumption for Human Health. Nutrients, 13(9), 2918. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu13092918

Grzegorzewski, J., Bartsch, F., Köller, A., & König, M. (2022). Pharmacokinetics of Caffeine: A Systematic Analysis of Reported Data for Application in Metabolic Phenotyping and Liver Function Testing. Frontiers in pharmacology, 12, 752826. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphar.2021.752826

Food Standards Australia and New Zealand, (2025). Caffeine review. https://www.foodstandards.gov.au/sites/default/files/2025-03/P1056%20SD2%202nd%20CFS%20DIA.pdf 

Low, J. J., Tan, B. J., Yi, L. X., Zhou, Z. D., & Tan, E. K. (2024). Genetic susceptibility to caffeine intake and metabolism: a systematic review. Journal of translational medicine, 22(1), 961. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12967-024-05737-z

Popa, L. C., Abu-Awwad, A., Farcas, S. S., Abu-Awwad, S. A., & Andreescu, N. I. (2025). Interaction Between CYP1A2-Related Caffeine Metabolism and Vitamin B12/Folate Status in Patients with Metabolic Syndrome: A Novel Biomarker Axis. Metabolites, 15(7), 450. https://doi.org/10.3390/metabo15070450

Schliep, K. C., Schisterman, E. F., Mumford, S. L., Pollack, A. Z., Zhang, C., Ye, A., Stanford, J. B., Hammoud, A. O., Porucznik, C. A., & Wactawski-Wende, J. (2012). Caffeinated beverage intake and reproductive hormones among premenopausal women in the BioCycle Study. The American journal of clinical nutrition, 95(2), 488–497. https://doi.org/10.3945/ajcn.111.021287