Rhonda Patrick

Okay, and then another related question on coffee was from KRD, who says, Hi, Rhonda, on the subject of coffee, what does the research say about coffee causing loss or malabsorption of minerals such as iron or zinc or copper?

Also, does coffee cause dehydration?

In what way can we drink coffee to prevent nutrient loss?

So with respect to nutrient loss, coffee, really, most people are fine.

I would say it's very minor.

And the biggest minor effect would be iron.

So even most people that have normal amounts of iron don't have to worry about this.

But

it can cause a little bit of an absorption issue with iron.

And so if you are eating a meal, you probably want to make sure it's like the coffee spaced out by like an hour so that you're not inhibiting the absorption of iron from your meal.

When it comes to dehydration, it's totally like it's just not it's kind of unfounded, basically, especially for people drinking normal amounts of coffee.

And you start to get into like the really high dose.

Maybe you can cause some issues.

But there was a study showing that, you know, for 200 mil cups of coffee per day.

So this is about four milligrams of caffeine per kilogram body weight per day.

Over the course of 72 hours, there was no difference in terms of water, total body water and urine, osmolarity, just all that stuff.

So there's really just not a lot of evidence that it's causing dehydration in most normal circumstances.

Another rapid fire question from Farid Gargour.

They ask if there's any issues of drinking coffee on an empty stomach.

Not that I'm aware of.