Who doesn’t love coffee and if it’s an Irish one, it’s a cherry on the cake. Drooling already, are you? Well, once in a blue moon, it can be your poison but overdoing it can wreck your heart health. The thing is that mixing coffee with alcohol can bamboozle your heart because they don’t interact really well.
But why do we like it Irish? The funda is that when you mix these two, it instantly energises you. This eventually also keeps you happy! And as per the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, it also masks your depression (of course, as you feel ecstatic).
We know you may be feeling mixed emotions, but we can’t keep you in the dark.
Come, let’s dig a little deeper to find out what actually happens when you mix alcohol and coffee.
Both coffee and alcohol have different effects on the body, says celeb nutritionist
Caffeine is a stimulant that can make you feel energetic and alert. Alcohol, on the other hand, is a depressant that can make you feel sleepy or less alert than usual.
When you mix a stimulant with a depressant, the stimulant can mask the depressant’s effects. In other words, combining caffeine and alcohol may mask some of the alcohol’s depressant effects. You might feel more alert and energetic than you normally would while drinking.
But mixing caffeine and alcohol raises your blood pressure, which further increases your risk for:
- Stroke
- Heart attack
- Heart disease
“Another side effect of mixing alcohol and caffeine is that it can cause an irregular heartbeat (atrial fibrillation). If you have a heart condition, you should avoid combining the two. Mixing caffeine and alcohol may also affect the chemicals in your brain that induce sleep,” suggests Sonia Baksh, nutritionist and founder of DtF.
Since alcohol and caffeine are both diuretics, they can make you urinate more. As a result, dehydration can be a concern when mixing caffeine and alcohol.
Here are some symptoms of dehydration that you need to be vigilant about:
1. Feeling of thirst
2. Dry mouth
3. Dark coloured urine (dark yellow)
4. Feeling dizzy
5. Heartburn
While combining alcohol and caffeine is never recommended, some combinations of the two may be less risky than others. Remember, the main issue is that caffeine can mask the effects of alcohol, leading you to drink more than you usually would.
Now let’s see whether you can have them separately and still have the same impact or not. Well, the thing is that you need to be cautious about the timing. As per the nutritionist, a gap of 4 to 5 hours between these two is highly recommended.
So the bottom line is – it might be the best for your taste, but it is definitely not right for your heart. So, it’s time to press a pause!
