How your daily drink choice may be affecting your mental health

• New research finds surprising links between popular beverages, from coffee and energy drinks to bubble tea, and mental health.
• While most studies concur that sugar-sweetened drinks can increase the risk of conditions like depression and anxiety, research has consistently found multiple health benefits for one beverage — coffee.
• Researchers believe coffee’s protective effect on mood and mental health is based on multiple mechanisms, including high levels of antioxidants and flavanols.

Could your morning coffee or daily energy drink habit be affecting your mood? New research has revealed that our daily drink choices may be negatively affecting our mental health — bar one particular beverage.

A meta-analysis published in August in the journal Depression and Anxiety found that drinking nonalcoholic beverages was associated with an ​18% increased risk of depression,​ but that coffee appeared to have a protective effect.

It goes without saying that this benefit was only observed with plain coffee with minimal or no added sugar, and that heavily sweetened coffees have been linked to health risks.

The paper analyzed data from 59 studies, involving over 2 million participants across 22 countries. People who drank higher amounts of coffee had approximately a 13% lower likelihood (an odds ratio of 0.87) of experiencing depressive symptoms compared to people who drank little to no coffee.

However, this protective effect was only observed in the case of depression, and drinking more coffee did not seem to have the same effect on anxiety or stress.

Medical News Today looks at what evidence so far shows about how different beverages can affect mental health and speaks to two experts — Andrew Odegaard, MD, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics with the UCI Program in Public Health, and Jennifer Pallian, RD, BSc in Food, Nutrition and Health, both uninvolved in the study — on how sugar and coffee can vastly affect mental health.