Many Americans of all ages are coffee drinkers. If this doesn’t apply to you, then you probably know someone who has to have at least one or two cups of coffee in the morning before they start to function.

Growing up, my mom and dad always started every day with one or two cups of coffee, but I’ve also seen them get up and get going without their coffee. For them, it was more of what they liked than what they needed.

On the other hand, many a co-worker of mine needed that cup of coffee in the morning or they struggled the entire day. Personally, I always thought they were addicted to the caffeine in the coffee and used the caffeine or lack thereof for how well they performed on the job on any given day.

Due to the popularity of coffee, especially with companies like Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Tim Hortons, Caribou Coffee Company, Peets Coffee & Tea, Dutch Bros. Coffee, Seattle’s Best Coffee, Gloria Jean’s Coffees, Costa Coffee, Lavazza and others, many younger adults have become the latest addicts needing their morning caffeine fix.

Over the years, we’ve seen reports that coffee is bad for your health and other reports claim that coffee has some beneficial health properties. So, how much coffee is good for you and how much is not good for you?

A recent report on Fox News helps answer that question:

“A cup of joe per day might keep the doctor away, but half a dozen or more is pushing it. Even though there are tons of legitimate reasons to drink coffee for good health, a recent study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition shows that drinking six or more cups a day increases a person’s risk for developing heart disease by as much as 22 percent.”

“In their research, the University of South Australia’s Ang Zhou and Elina Hyppönen looked for a link between heart disease and the caffeine-metabolizing gene CYP1A2. They did this by analyzing data on 347,077 coffee drinkers in the U.K. aged 37 through 73. Of the sample size, there were 8,368 documented incidents of heart disease.”

“While they didn’t find a link between the gene and heart disease, they did find that heavy coffee drinkers were at higher risk across the board; those who drank six cups of coffee or more per day were 22 percent more likely to develop the condition than people who drank just one or two.”

“The likely reason? High levels of caffeine can result in high blood pressure, which is a leading cause of heart disease. The average cup of coffee contains 95 milligrams of caffeine. Six would have around 570.”

You may think that 6 cups of coffee a day is a lot, but consider those that have a cup or two before going to work, then they grab a cup of coffee when they get to work and every couple of hours, they have another cup. By the time they leave work, it’s easy for many to have consumed 6 or more cups through the course of the day. As you can see, it’s easy for someone to be consuming a dangerous amount of coffee without realizing it.

If this is you, then you need to substitute a glass of water for some of those cups of coffee. Not only will be better on your heart, but the water will be better on your kidneys and many other organs and tissues in your body.