Coffee is "a rich and wonderful elixir", says a professor, adding the alkaloid caffeine does no harm to our heart.  

"For most of us, drinking coffee is not a good habit. It silts up our body with toxins and causes cancer. But, it is just a stereotype that has stuck with us," Dr Stephen Alexander-- an Associate Professor of Molecular Pharmacology at the University of Nottingham told Mail Online website.

Coffee does not only taste good, it also does us some good, said Dr Alexander who has been studying coffee and its constituent drug, caffeine, for more than 20 years.

He said a research recently on mice proved that coffee can reverse the effects of Alzheimer's. The disease damages the brain by encouraging it to overproduce a protein known as beta-amyloid, which causes a person to lose his memory and one by one, all of their faculties. Coffee astonishingly reversed the build-up of this beta-amyloid protein in the brains of experimental mice.

Dr Alexander then presented other health benefits that coffee can provide. He said coffee can help stave off Parkinson's disease and other forms of dementia. It also temporarily boosts short-term memory. Since it helps focus the mind, regular coffee drinkers appear to be better at reasoning. What's more, a study carried out at the University of California has discovered that women aged above 80 performed significantly better on cognitive tests if they were lifelong coffee drinkers; other studies have found coffee can help ward off Type 2 diabetes, as well as reducing the risk of developing gallstones and other gallbladder diseases.

The author is a regular coffee drinker and he recommends readers to drink a few cups of strong black coffee a day.

True, coffee can slightly raise blood pressure and may make us a bit anxious in larger doses. But with so many health benefits, perhaps the author's recommendation is not a bad recipe!