Many of us need our daily dose of coffee more than we’ve ever needed it before, with additional stress caused by changes in routine. It calms us down, relaxes us and has a range of health benefits from lowering blood sugar to delivering antioxidants.
Now, a new preliminary study carried out by 50 researchers has revealed that the reason that coffee could helping your mood and your health could be down to something called epigenetics (no, we’d never heard of it either).
Epigenetics relates to outside factors that can turn genes on and off. In this case, the ‘outside factor’ was the drinking of coffee and tea, and the study looked at how could alter the expression of genes (without altering the underlying DNA sequence). In the case of coffee, this process is known as DNA methylation as it adds methyl groups to the DNA molecule. There is some evidence that coffee can actually help to repair damaged DNA, which could be why researchers have seen some positive results on diseases like Alzheimer’s. The reason this new study took the combined efforts of 50 authors is that it correlated results from around 15,800 people and 15 separate original studies. Although the new study is preliminary and is still being peer reviewed, it could give us an insight into why coffee has the health benefits found by other research.
While we may be struggling slightly to get our head around epigenetics, one thing we do know for sure is that coffee is delicious and forms an essential part of our working day! If you feel the same way, then take a look at the product page of our website to browse our range of top quality beans and ground coffee, all available at great wholesale prices.