We continue to look for the best coffees and we’re always researching ways to make our coffee even healthier. The deeper we go, the more we understand that coffee is extremely complex, and various beneficial compounds can be created and destroyed at different roast levels.
Purity FLOW is our original coffee formulated for all-around health. When we began Purity Coffee, we sought to create the single most healthy coffee. We have spent years improving our flagship blend by developing close, direct connections with four producers who are committed to regenerative, organic farming and by lab testing the coffees not only to ensure they were free of contaminants like mold and mycotoxins, but to measure levels of coffee’s most beneficial compounds like antioxidants (chlorogenic acids-CGA and lactones-CGL), trigonelline and nutrients, as well as caffeine.
Within the feedback from over 18,000 customers, there are thousands of Purity drinkers who say they think better, perform better and feel better when they drink Purity. We aspire for everyone to have this feeling of being in a pure energy state that opens you up to more magic, creativity and flow state to happen. We understand FLOW as the optimal state for channeling our life energies and performing at our best. We have embarked on a mission to understand what makes Purity Coffee help people get into flow.
What creates flow? We continue to research and lab test for particular bioactive compounds in our coffees, which scientists believe provide antioxidant support and anti-inflammatory activity for overall good health. However, one thing we do understand is that healthy, organic specialty coffees, roasted mindfully to maintain the most valuable compounds, in their entire combinations of compounds are more powerful than selected, extracted components.
What knocks you out of flow? The jitters. Stomach issues. Sluggishness. Caffeine crashes. Purity Coffee eliminates the causes that prevent you from feeling flow: Mold, mycotoxins, certain biogenic amines, toxic pesticides/herbicides/fertilizers and other contaminants.
Overall Health
Physical and mental performance
Increased mental focus
Purity FLOW comes from our direct relationships with producers in Nicaragua, Honduras and Colombia The coffee is fully traceable, which is important. One myth in coffee is that “single origin” is higher quality than a blend. Blends that are not traceable are of concern (food products should be fully traceable for food safety and security reasons). The point of a single origin coffee is to be traceable and for the consumer to be able to enjoy the story of the farm along with tasting and identifying flavors of the terroir, cultivar and processing methods the producer employed.
Because Purity is focused on health and safety, we can fully trace our coffees, but identifying nuances of flavor is secondary to identifying the high levels of antioxidants and nutrients our producers have developed… which also happens to make the coffee taste exceptionally good. In addition, blend allows us to continually receive fresh coffees from our farms, because they are on different crop cycles. We believe this is healthier than relying on single origins which come in once a year—by the end of the year the green coffee has begun to lose its organic matter, but our coffees do not get to that age. Our coffees are special in that they are continually coming in fresh throughout the year.
We have a precise roasting curve for each of our coffees and Purity FLOW has been refined over the years to create a balanced coffee that retains maximum CGA. Because CGA and the coffee’s natural acidity declines the longer the coffee is roasted, we found the roast level “sweet spot” that also makes it easy on the stomach without going too dark.
Coffee is one of nature’s most multifaceted food products, made more complex by the expansive number of cultivars (hundreds) grown in diverse environments (from Mexico to Brazil, from Burundi to Sumatra) under different conditions (altitudes, latitudes, temperatures, rainfall, soil types) and then processed in diverse ways (washed, natural, and all the processes in between). All of these factors impact the chemical compounds in final raw coffee seed (“bean” -- it’s really a seed). Furthermore, the choices the roaster makes to apply varying amounts of heat throughout the roast causes the chemical compounds to change in an incalculable number of ways. Finally, the methods used to brew coffee can extract different compounds in the coffee in different amounts.
The deeper we go, the more we understand that coffee is extremely complex, and various beneficial compounds can be created and destroyed at different roast levels. However, there are other key compounds that have been studied (and many more to discover) and impact many parts of the body that are involved with performing at one’s best, not just the brain.
In addition to other organs like the brain, liver and heart, compounds in coffee have been shown to have bioactivity in the gut, most notably in studies on protection against colon cancer. There is more to the gut than just digestion: The past 40 years have brought to light that the enteric nervous system has a major impact on “emotional and cognitive centers of the brain with peripheral intestinal functions. Recent advances in research have described the importance of gut microbiota in influencing these interactions…” (Carabotti et al. 2015).The following compounds are significant in coffee and overall health, particularly the brain and the gut, where coffee serves as a food for beneficial microbiota and immune system support (Sales & Farah, 2020):
These are just a few highlighted compounds for this review—many more have been and are being studied by scientists actively.
CGA can be found in abundance in many fruits, including coffee, which is one of the primary delivery methods of polyphenols in peoples’ diets — some people may shy away from fruits and vegetables, but they drink coffee habitually and often multiple times throughout the day.
The amount of CGA in any given coffee depends significantly on plant nutrition, growing conditions, cultivar, processing and roasting. At Purity Coffee we seek out arabica coffees that are highest in CGA and then work to retain them throughout the supply chain and during roasting, where a significant amount of CGA is lost. The darker the coffee, the less CGA content will be in the final brew.
Despite CGA being the major bioactive compounds in coffee, the effects of CGA and their derivative lactones on the brain, cognition and mood have only picked up speed for investigation in the past couple of decades. Studies have shown CGA and their CGL are bioavailable and CGL can enter in brain tissue (de Paulis et al. 2014). CGA lactones in roasted coffee have displayed antioxidant and significant neuroprotective properties in tests of cellular degeneration and death of neurons subjected to oxidative stress (Chuet al. 2009).
Oxidative stress is linked to neurodegenerative diseases (and others) and to some behaviors, such as anxiety and depression. In particular, recent research observed a close relationship between oxidative stress and anxiety, there are reports of behavioral effects of CGA including the demonstration that CGA and/or its derivatives reduce anxiety-related behavior (Bouayedet al. 2007) and improve spatial learning and memory (Han et al. 2011).
While the mechanism at which CGA’s impact the brain isn’t completely understood, “About ⅓ of consumed chlorogenic acids are absorbed in the small intestine and the remaining amount is partly absorbed in the large intestine” as metabolites (Sales& Farah 2020). Those that reach the large intestine will get metabolized by the gut microbiota, although the impact of that interaction is yet to be completely understood. Much more is left to learn on how this could impact our microbiota and the connection between our enteric nervous system and the central nervous system.
One important note on CGA: The major CGA compounds present in coffee are absorbed and/or metabolized in humans at different rates and quantities, with a large inter-individual variation. (Monteiro, Farah, et al. 2007)
Coffee’s impact on chronic diseases has been studied for decades, and the growing body of research continues to astound us as new compounds in coffee are discovered in the green (raw) coffee and from the thermodynamic results of roasting. Key topics in health include coffee’s impact on:
There have been thousands of scientific papers and dozens of books on these topics, which are included in the citations at the end of this page, but here are some highlights:
Note: Please see Purity PROTECT for a more detailed review.
At the end of each of our chromosomes, we have special sequences of DNA, called telomeres. Many people compare them to the plastic end of a shoelace – they are there to hold things together and keep the laces from unraveling. Telomeres act protecting the DNA in the chromosomes. Each time cells divide, their telomere is shortened until at some point they are completely degraded. Also, shortened, aged telomeres are associated with a variety of adverse health effects.
As with many coffee studies, the investigators look to see if it is coffee or the caffeine in coffee that impacts the results. One investigation evaluated the relationship between caffeine intake, coffee consumption and telomere length in over 5800 adults. Astonishingly, results suggest that non-coffee caffeine use accounts for shorter telomeres in U.S. adults, independent of numerous covariates, whereas coffee predicts longer telomeres. (Tucker 2017)
Of course, caffeine is the compound most often associated with coffee, especially in relation to mental acuity. All too often coffee is simply equated to caffeine with many people feeling that it is the only compound that matters. However, at Purity we like to say often that coffee is much more than just a caffeine fix. We know, though, that many people drink coffee for the effect of caffeine on their alertness, but caffeine does have additional health benefits.
Caffeine is a much-debated compound, and it would be difficult to provide a thorough discussion of caffeine here. Caffeine is an alkaloid found in leaves, seeds, and fruits of coffee, cocoa, cola, guarana and tea plants. Within 10 minutes of drinking coffee, the stomach and first part of the intestine absorb the caffeine, and it reaches maximum concentration in the bloodstream within about an hour. However, everyone has their own unique tolerance to caffeine. Factors such as genetics, body chemistry and caffeine-consuming habits indicate whether someone is a “fast metabolizer” or “slow metabolizer” of caffeine. (Tan et al. 2007)
In some cases there are medications with which caffeine interacts (particularly anti-epileptic meds). Those severely affected by caffeine should avoid coffee and even decaf, but if you simply have a low tolerance for caffeine, we recommend trying Purity CALM, which is 99.9% caffeine free, to get health benefits from coffee.
We must not discount caffeine as a compound that has pharmacological properties. Caffeine acts as an antagonist of adenosine receptors in humans (it blocks the receptors)—adenosine interacts with specific cell receptors, most noticeably inhibiting neural activity and causing drowsiness. This reduction in adenosine activity leads to increased activity of the neurotransmitters dopamine and glutamate (Nehlig 2018).
There is also evidence that caffeine, as an adenosine receptor antagonist, reduces pain. It is well known in the medical field that it produces adjuvant analgesic properties when in combination with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and acetaminophen (Tylenol) and has been also shown to effect nerves in the body (Sawynok 1998). In this way, caffeine may also reduce the sensations of pain associated with muscle work or physical activity (Davis et al. 2003).
There is a lot of evidence and many scientific studies to back up that caffeine ingestion improves endurance sports performance. Recent research concludes that caffeine affects endurance performance through its antagonist effect on adenosine receptors in the brain (Davis). These studies show a pretty consistent benefit in endurance exercise by decreasing perceived exertion and increasing time to exhaustion (Keisler and Armsey 2006). In a large review considering 21 studies this topic, the amount of caffeine commonly shown to improve endurance performance was between 3 and 6 mg·kg-1 body mass (Ganio et al. 2009).
A review of studies on endurance performance in 2016 included 9 studies that specified the effect of caffeine in coffee. They noted significant improvements in endurance performance in five of nine studies, which were on average 24.2% over controls for time to exhaustion trials. They suggested that there was moderate evidence supporting the use of coffee as an aid to improve performance in both endurance cycling and running sports (Higgins et al. 2016). This much (over 20%) of a performance enhancement is much larger than the usual margins reported in caffeine studies, and is definitely worth further investigation.
Preclinical studies conducted by Arendash et al. (2009)demonstrated that giving caffeine in the daily diet to mutation transgenic mice, starting in young adulthood, results in cognitive protection in various tests across a multiple of cognitive domains, such as spatial learning, memory, identification, strategy switching, and working memory. All of these attributes are related to the feeling of flow.
Click the links below to view the lab results for PROTECT. Results are based upon 15g of roasted & ground coffee, which is equal to the recommend amount used for brewing one 8 oz cup of coffee.