by Afaque Ahmed

Created on: February 07, 2009   Last Updated: February 09, 2009

People generally prefer one over the other due to presumed benefits and for the sake of feeling good about drinking either coffee or tea. Although, I know all the health benefits and side effects associated with both, I still feel a certain pleasure in drinking coffee. But let's not get in to the debate of which one is cooler to have coffee or tea. Of course coffee adds to style.

Both coffee and tea have one component common between them, which is caffeine. Researchers have found recently many benefits of caffeine. They say it:

1. Alerts the nervous system of body by meddling with Adenosine. Adenosine is the compound which induces sleep and sluggishness in body.

2. Acts as an analgesic, relaxing muscles and if used before work out helps to prevent muscles from souring.

3. Contains anti-oxidants which help in picking up free radicals which are a byproduct of oxidation of food. These free radicals can damage our body cells severely and can be a reason for various types of cancers.

4. One of the reasons of bowel/colon cancer is the retention of waste food for longer time periods. This waste food contains compounds from bile which are direct source of cancer. Caffeine prevents specifically bowel/colon cancer by increasing the movement of waste food in the colon.

5. Helps in controlling asthma attacks. Caffeine is a bronchodilator, means it can relax the respiratory tract to insure smooth breathing. Just for an insight; people who have had any experience with asthma must know about Theophylline and Theobromine. These are common drugs which have similar composition as caffeine. Two cups of a normal coffee will do the same as one pill of Theophylline.

6. Helps in reducing headache by relaxing blood vessels in head region.

7. Helps in enhancing short term memory, cognitive and logical reasoning capability of brain.

So these are the few common good points of coffee and tea. But the question is the amount of caffeine found in both. A study by International Coffee Organization revealed that coffee has four times more anti-oxidants than tea, only because it contains more caffeine.

Now that we have discussed about caffeine, lets move on to the other components found in coffee which are nutritional blessings from Heavens.

A moderate intake of coffee reduces the risk of Type 2 diabetes.

Diabetes mellitus Type 2 is caused by relative deficiency of insulin. Chlorogenic acids found in coffee slow down the action of the enzymes involved in the formation of glucose and this procedure is used

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