He Drank 47 Cups of Coffee a Day and What Happened was Shocking!

He Drank 47 Cups of Coffee a Day and What Happened Was Beyond Amazing

That’s about 6 gallons a day or cumulatively enough coffee to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool. He effectively could have had a cup of coffee from each of our Top 50 websites to buy coffee, every day!

Since consuming 6 gallons a day of any liquid would kill you, he drank his coffee in the form of super-strong espresso, thus significantly cutting down the volume but not the potency. (He also chewed raw coffee grounds when he needed an extra energy burst.)

What happened?

Now, you’d think that anybody consuming such an insane amount of coffee would get the jitters to the point that they’d be walking around on the ceiling like a gecko. What actually happened, though, was far more amazing.

While on the world’s hugest coffee buzz, Honore de Balzac wrote 47 novels, 12 novellas, 18 short stories, and 8 plays. Balzac also created the world’s first continuing series with character crossovers–the model for all genre fiction. You think Stan Lee created a lot of heroes and villains? Well, Balzac invented and juggled 2,472 named characters.

Even more amazingly, Balzac created this mass of intellectual property without using a computer or even a typewriter. Or even a sharpie. No, that huge creative output came out of a hand-cut quill pen. And the writing wasn’t fluff. Quite the contrary, Balzac is widely considered the most influential novelist of all time.

So, we’d all like to be that creative, right? Well, before you order 12 espresso machines on Amazon, be forewarned that–despite the salutary effect it apparently had on Balzac– drinking THAT MUCH coffee is a really bad idea. While you probably wouldn’t get caffeine poisoning, you’d definitely end up with sleep problems and probably some kind of nervous exhaustion.

On the other hand, you might want to step up your game a bit. According to multiple studies, you get the greatest benefit from coffee if you drink between 6 and 8 cups a day, or roughly a quart brewed “Americano.” So most people, sadly, probably aren’t drinking enough. Bottoms up!

This article is from Inc.com

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

If you are also a coffee lover, you might like to learn more about coffee.