Coffee & Cigarettes?!

Dump those cigarettes and taste the coffee!!!

First, the bitter truth. Sorry smokers. Or coffee lovers. Depends on what you like more. You know our side!

The truth is that coffee and cigarettes together can do damage to your heart as you are dealing with two stimulants.

1. Coffee can be good for your liver as well as reducing the chances of Alzheimer’s, dementia, stroke, and cancer. There are also consequences of drinking too much coffee such as dehydration and insomnia.
2. Cigarettes may seem to be a dependence to those who need a stress reliever as they can bring a euphoric feeling of relaxation but only harm comes from cigarettes. Once you inhale a cigarette, 7,000 chemicals are released with 69 of them causing cancer. Because the effects of smoking are only temporary, people tend to smoke every few hours.

In reality, no one should be smoking but if you feel the need to smoke, it is best to avoid coffee when doing it and vice versa. Coffee (as a supplement to smoking) should be taken in moderation to reduce the harmful risks. More information about risks of drinking coffee and smoking in the same time you can find here.

Second, the more expensive truth. If You smoke, you can thank us later.

Nicotine doubles the rate at which the body depletes caffeine. This is because nicotine interferes with the body’s ability to absorb and utilise caffeine (smoking enhance the activity of liver enzymes - called cytochrome P450 isoenzyme 1A2 and UDP-glucuronosyltransferases - these enzymes are what cause metabolism, a form of chemical chewing within the body, which means smokers lose the effects of caffeine faster). That’s why it takes a smoker more coffee to get the same buzz as a non-smoker. And equally why when you stop smoking and consume the same amount of caffeine, you feel much more jittery.

Third, but most important. Tasteeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!

In a new study published in the journal Chemosensory Perception, researchers found that smoking causes permanent structural changes to the tongue, degrading the taste buds’ capacity to detect signature bitter flavours of our favourite caffeinated beverage. This new study not only found that smoking had a long-term impact on taste, but that bitter flavours were most "significantly" affected. Moreover, the research highlights already known fact that bitterness can generally be identified at very low concentrations.

So, to be clear - smokers and those who have quit cannot fully appreciate the full flavour of a cup of coffee, because many cannot taste the bitterness of their regular caffeine kick. So, it’s likely that smokers need to consume more coffee to get the same hit that non-smokers get.

Could it be that those who profess to love cigarettes and coffee simply don't like coffee when they can’t properly taste it? If you're a smoker there's only one way to find out: kick the habit and enjoy the caffeine.

And share the road. And obey the traffic rules.