Talk to me about Coffee

As a long time coffee drinker, I don't think there are too many negatives.  Eventually you don't get the same effect once your body gets used to the caffeine, and you can get to the point that if you don't drink it, you can barely function.  It also can wreak havoc on your esophagus.  As far as endurance sports go, I don't know of any negative side effects.  

I don't buy any of the arguments that it causes dehydration because it's a diuretic.  That might hold true if you were taking caffeine pills, but with the amount of water in coffee, it balances out well.  I don't have any links to back this up, but I know I've heard of several studies on this that show that there is no real dehydration effects.

I'm also a long time coffee drinker, but those two things seem fairly negative.  Did you mean that first line to use the sarc font?

I didn't mean to use red font, but I can see where those two things by themselves are "fairly" negative.

I've had several periods (during deployment) that I had to go cold turkey and while I had a few headaches, survived without a problem.  I have had problems with acid reflux and other side effects, but have been able to control those as well.  All told, the positives have well outweighed the negatives. 

The first downside is paying $2 (or more) per cup to stop at Starbucks.  Even at 1 a day, that's still a couple hundred $$ per year. 

For a cup or two per day, you're getting about 100-400 mg of caffeine which shouldn't cause you too many problems.  Enough to get low-grade headaches from caffeine withdrawl if you miss the java, but not enough to wreck your finely tuned body unless you've specifically been instructed to avoid caffeine.  Drink lots of water. 

Ohhh coffee, sweet nectar of life............... oh wait, that's beer. 

I drink coffee daily, and it will be pried from my cold dead hands.  However, I'm not exactly the picture of the ultimate endurance athlete. 

I'm pretty sure that caffeine withdrawal symptoms go away after a couple days.  If I don't have a cup by noon, I will sometimes get a slight headache, sometimes not - and I am a 1-2, sometimes 3 or 4 or more cups per day drinker, normally on my first cup by 6:30.  Some days (like today) the cup I drink on the way to work turns out to be my only cup all day, other days we have the office coffee maker going all morning, even sometimes in the afternoon.  It makes everyone happy and it smells good too!  I don't think there's much of a downside.

It was either Runners World or Running Times just talked about caffeine and it does not have a diuretic effect until something like 600+mg. A cup of coffee is around 120-150. I drink it some mornings, others I dont. For a long time I drank every morning. I have gone cold turkey a few times without issues. I think if you have GI issues to begin with you may have some. Or if you are someone who has acid reflex it can cause flare ups.

Great antioxidants, no real downside. I have very white teeth naturally, and coffee does not rally stain them either.

Coffee... Wouldn't make it through the day without it!!