A daily cup of coffee may provide a quick pick-me-up, but it also has a mixed bag of good and bad impacts on your health, according to a recent study.

Coffee helps people stay active, but it also deprives them of sleep and there is more you never thought of, according to researchers.

According to findings, while coffee does not appear to cause abnormal heart rhythms in the upper chambers, it can cause the lower chambers to skip beats.

Lead author Dr. Gregory Marcus says that “People should understand that this extremely commonly consumed beverage really does have substantive effects on our health, and they’re variable.”

The author adds: “It’s not that coffee is necessarily all good or all bad. It’s very likely that whether it’s net good or net bad depends on a combination of factors.”

Caffeine has long been thought to be a potential heart health issue because it is a stimulant that raises heart rate. Dr. Sana Al-Khatib, a Duke cardiac rhythm expert, says that previous studies on the subject had yielded results that were “all over the place.”.

“Can I drink coffee? is a question we get almost every week from patients. Especially in patients with atrial fibrillation,” adds Al-Khatib, who was not involved in the study – (atrial fibrillation – a cardiac rhythm abnormality raises the risk of stroke and heart attack).

Marcus and his colleagues recruited 100 coffee drinkers for this clinical experiment and fitted them with a Fitbit, a heart monitor, and a blood glucose monitor to track their health on a continuous basis.

Over the course of two weeks, participants were randomly allocated to either consume as much coffee as they wanted or skip it entirely.

The authors then tracked the changes that occurred within each person and between people as a result of being exposed to coffee or not being exposed to coffee.

The study revealed no evidence that coffee drinking caused abnormal cardiac rhythms in the atria, the heart’s upper chambers. That’s fantastic news, because one of the most common medical concerns regarding coffee has been that it may cause atrial fibrillation, a potentially fatal condition.

However, they discovered that coffee drinking can cause the ventricles (the heart’s lower chambers) to skip beats.

Marcus adds: “On days randomly assigned to coffee, people exhibited about 50% more premature ventricular contractions [PVCs] — more early beats arising from the lower chambers of the heart. Those who consumed more than a drink of coffee exhibited essentially a doubling of their PVC counts.”

He went on to say that PVCs are prevalent and are generally thought to be safe.

According to the author, “We all have them once in a while, and generally they’re considered benign.”

But “more PVCs are an independent risk factor for heart failure over time. Not everyone with more PVCs has heart failure, but it is a factor.”

Coffee also had a significant impact on two other important aspects of your health: physical activity and sleep.

Participants took an average of around 1,000 more steps on days when they were allocated to consume coffee, according to Marcus, than they would have taken otherwise.

“For every additional cup of coffee drink consumed, there was an additional 500 steps,” he added.

Coffee, on the other hand, robbed sleep.

The team found that “On days randomly assigned to coffee, people slept on average about a half-hour less that evening. For every additional cup of coffee, there was about 18 minutes less sleep.”

But people who were born with the ability to break down coffee more quickly didn’t show any connection between how much coffee they drank and how tired they were.

Subjects in this research were young and healthy, with an average age of 38 and a BMI in the healthy range — “not typical of the patient population we see in clinical practice,” according to Al-Khatib.

So, if you’re worried about the effects of coffee on your health, Marcus recommends speaking with your doctor. It may make sense for you to drink coffee or abstain from it, depending on your unique health conditions.

“For those that are concerned about atrial fibrillation, these data suggest there’s no reason to worry about coffee consumption. On the other hand, if there are concerns about PVCs, it may make sense to avoid or minimize coffee consumption,” Marcus added.

“If there’s a goal to increase or maintain physical activity, then coffee may be helpful,” he said, “But for those who have difficulty sleeping then the sleep disruption caused by coffee may make it less worth it.”

Image Credit: Getty

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