Drinking Coffee May Be Sexier Than You Think

Nancy Astor to Winston Churchill: "If I were your wife, I would put poison in your coffee."

Winston Churchill to Nancy Astor: "And if I were your husband, I would drink it."

It's officially Valentine's Day, and to mark the occasion it seems appropriate to discuss the role coffee has had on matters of the heart. According to one web site, "no other substance can claim the equivalent for sexuality and lawful voluntary consumption as coffee. Alcohol doesn't even come in at a close second. Tea is way down the bottom of the list. Soda pop is higher on the list than tea. Soda pop has caffeine in it like coffee, but when it comes to sex, soda pop just doesn't have the pizazz. Coffee rules the bedroom."

The above quote is focusing more on the cultural aspects of coffee than biological ones, but the point is still a good one. There is something about going for coffee in our busy, harried world that seems almost illicit (but not too much so): It is a safe, acceptable way to shift the perspective from a formal to informal one. Coffee sharpens the senses, and for some that can enhance sex. 

It wasn't always seen that way. According to Pravda's English web site, Dr. Columbo at the University of Marseilles said in 1679 that among other things, coffee causes exhaustion, paralysis and impotence. Even now, coffee still gets a good bit of negative publicity. According to www.greenprophet.com a new study from the Netherlands says that drinking coffee and having sex can raise your risk of having a stroke or aneurysm of the brain. The study asked 250 people with a history of such ailments to complete a detailed questionnaire. According to the study, men suffer more strokes than do women, and usually they occur in the adult population.

But coffee lovers take heart: there is an upside to all this. According to the BBC News web site, a study by Southwestern University scientists found that caffeine has a positive impact on the libido of female rats. The study cautioned however that these rats had never been exposed to caffeine before, and that it would need 10 cups of coffee in one shot to have a similar effect on human females.