Is sipping a coffee after a heavy meal actually good for helping you digest it? “For some people, absolutely,” says Dr Emily Leeming, a dietitian at King’s College London. “But it’s not always a good idea.”
Caffeine stimulates the gut, increasing muscle contractions, she says, which for many people helps food move through the digestive system “at a nice pace” before being excreted.
“If you’ve got a slightly sluggish digestion, that can be helpful,” she says. “But for others – if you have irritable bowel syndrome, for example – it can backfire, speeding things up too much and making digestion uncomfortable.”
Coffee’s effects aren’t limited to gut motility. Regular consumption has also been linked to better overall gut health. There’s growing evidence that habitual coffee drinkers tend to have a different gut microbiome – the trillions of microbes that help with digestion and nutrient absorption – with more of certain microbes associated with good health. Coffee is one of the main sources of polyphenols in our diets, a group of antioxidant compounds that these microbes feed on. It also contains a small amount of fibre.
When it comes to using coffee as a tool for gut health, timing matters, Leeming says, because our gut health is linked to the health of all our body’s systems.
Caffeine has a long half-life – it can circulate in the body for up to 12 hours for some people – and may disrupt sleep. And “poor sleep is related to poor gut health”, says Leeming. Grogginess after a bad night’s sleep can also trigger less healthy food choices, which can affect our gut health more negatively still.
She recommends only drinking caffeinated coffee before noon, and switching to decaf or herbal tea in the afternoon.
