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Caffeine May Reduce Alzheimers
thelars writes "This article discusses research that links coffee consumption to a reduced risk of alzheimers disease. According to the article, drinking at least three cups of coffee a day may reduce your risk of alzheimers by up to 60%. Time to stock up on Penguin mints..."
Nicotine reduces risk of Alzheimer's too. I always new drinking 10 cups of coffee a day and chainsmoking was good for me...
Now I have the ultimate excuse to stay up till 4am coding hyped up on caffiene, i want to be able to do it for fifty more years without forgetting how.
And the benefits of the caffeine will be offset by the aluminum in the cans
thank you jolt
Seniors all hopped up on coffee and/or Penguin mints. I only hope it will allow them to drive the speed limit and turn off their blinkers after a turn.
Michael Loves Me!
I have read that playing chess (or similar games) can also help against Alzheimer's. Supposedly, this is due to requiring the brain to work in a particular manner. :)
I'd guess coffee does not help for the same reason .
Ah...Penguin Mints are -loaded- with Aspartame, yet another chemical that some suspect could be Alzheimer-causing (amongst other things).
Just go for a nice cup 'o Joe instead.
Can't even get a fucking topic right. It's "Alzheimer's."
This article says that caffeine may reduce Alzheimers.
However, this article says that alcohol may reduce Alzheimers.
So in other words...the best thing I can do is drink Irish coffee?
- JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
by the coffee makers. think about it: if we start/continue to drink 3 cups of coffee a day, they can say it is because we drank all that coffee but if we don't, we will forget they ever propogated such lies. its a win-win situation. down with big caffeine! unless they have gotten to you all already.....
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Not only that, but it has been shown to have great effects on Parkinson's disease as well. I know several folks personally where it has had a substantial effect in delaying onset and even reducing symptoms!
Check out this CNN story
Interesting. I've seen studies suggesting that increased brain activity throughout life also correlates with lower incidences of Alzheimers. People who read a lot, do crosswords, basically stay mentall active seem less likely to develop this disease.
I wonder if what is actually happening is the caffeine allows you to do more mental work, which in turn reduces your risk of Alzheimers.
Pure speculation, of course, but it would be interesting if someone could do the experiement to try to validate this theory.
Sailing over the event horizon
You docters have been telling us to drink 8 glasses of gravy a day. -Homer S.
Well, I guess at least 98% of the people who read Slashdot, don't have to worry about Alzheimers. I drink a good 5-6 cans of soda a day, along with 2 cups of coffie a day.
RaGe
We're all just noise on the wires..
Isn't anyone else terrified of hyperactive, forgetful old people? "OhwellIknowIwassupposedtodosomethingIthinkIwasgoi ngtocheckthemailorwasthatthebluejaywheredobluejays liveisitinAlaskaIdon'tquiteremember... Oh, hi there."
Bah, 60%! Having a fatal heart attack reduces your risk of having Alzheimers by 100%! So get back to that high-fat diet! ;)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Oh bother.
Right. Here's how it goes.
"Good morning, Mrs. Smith, I'd like to ask you a few questions."
"Little Johnny? Is that you?"
"No, Mrs Smith, I'm doing a study on coffee and Altzheimers..."
"What did you do with my cat?"
"Uh.. right... anyway..."
"Who are you? Why are you in my room..."
Yah - like I trust the memory of people with Altzheimers.
My grandmother had it. My grandparents would pick me up, and we would head off somewhere. She would ask about 4 times where we were going. She confused me with my dad constantly.
Should we now scrap all that other studies that suggest coffee consumption can be linked to higher blood pressure, which can in turn be linked to higher risk of heart attacks?
By dying earlier of other complications such as hypertension.
Short Term side effects of excessive consumption of caffeine include:
Nervousness, anxiety, irritability, headache, disturbed sleep, and stomach upset or peptic ulcers. In women, it may aggravate the symptoms of premenstrual syndrome
"Anybody who tells me I can't use a program because it's not open source, go suck on rms. I'm not interested." (LT 2004)
Caffeine May Reduce Alzheimers while needing to consume at least three cups of coffee a day while arrhythmias(heart problems) may be caused by excessive caffeine
its all about which you want to go first, your brain or heart. decisions... decisions...
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
Not that I know or not, but why is there an assumption that if coffee has some benefit that that benefit is due to caffiene? Coffee is some complex bean-juice!
don't drink so much coffee.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Too bad I quit drinking caffeine going on a year ago now. Hmmm... now I forgot why I quit, oh well.
Actually, I found it very surprising all the things that have caffeine in them. Over half of all pop, chocolate, tea, excedrin, coffee/cappuccino yogurt, etc. (I never ate that kind of yogurt before though.)
ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ONE! Just brushing up for my next big invention: Ethernet over Voice (EoV)
Given the link between sleep and memory (short-term memory is thought by many researchers to transfer to long-term during sleep, for example) I wonder if there'll be a similar effect among users of modafinil and other sleep-suppression drugs. Or is it something unique to caffeine that has nothing to do with its effect on sleep cycles?
aluminum causes it... so all the jolt that you been drinking dont count. it balances out.
However I beleive that it is only cooking in aluminum that does it... thats why cast aluminum pots are very bad. and aluminum foil. but their not gunna tell you that are they. nope. you buy too much of the stuff as a society for it to be a concern.
thats why i never cook anything in aluminum - and try to avoid anything served in it. like microwave foods.
I read Caffeine Blues by Stephen Cherniske a while back. Before the book, I was a regular coffee and soda drinker, and Penguin Mints were a staple on my desk. Since reading it, I've been caffeine-free for 6 months. And I've felt much better ever since.
The book cites tons of studies, and none of them claim anything beneficial about caffeine consumption. At best, most industry-funded studies showed no harm, and some of the more nuetral studies showed potential problems associated with chronic caffeine intake.
In fact, prior to reading this book, the only good thing I read about caffeine was about 10 years ago on Hyperreal's chemistry archive. I found a tidbit that said some study showed that coffee drinkers were less prone to suicide than non-coffee drinkers. I can;t seem to locate it, though.
I'm not preaching to anyone -- I still sneak in a morning coffee. And I really do miss my regular morning cup. However, if a die-hard (and quite rational) coffee drinker can be turned by this book, then all I'm saying is tread carefully. Thumb through this book while drinking a latte at Barnes and Noble. :)
Method of processing duck feet
Go to the source man! I generally refuse to make any comment on any scientific study until I've read the publication. Those of you submitting stories on a new biomedical science publication, please remember to at least point to the PubMed abstract of the paper. For those of you wanting to comment on the study, please read it, before doing so. If any of you can provide free access to the paper, please post it here! Thanks.
Linux at home
I wouldn't get too excited - the fact that small-sample studies this like manage to get published amazes me. They're using two sample populations of 54 people for a disease state who's incidence, from what we currently understand, is probably affected by DOZENS of parameters over a span of decades.
Even the most basic course in statistics won't let you put much trust in these results. You could probably show a correlation in the same small population for tv viewing habits or propensity for wearing tinfoil hats.
-j
Heh? I make a joke about Starbucks in a discussion about coffee and I get modded off-topic? Unfunny I could accept, but off-topic? Maybe the moderators need some coffee to help them wake up? Or maybe they just forgot which choice they were selecting from the list?
Ah well...
"Michael, I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing - and it was everything that I thought it could be."
So perhaps those who drink lots of caffeine don't live long enough to develop Alzheimer's?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Retrospective studies like this are too susceptible to confounding. One obvious issue would be that more intelligent/better off people might drink more coffee, and take longer for the disease to show up. There are a lot of variables that go into Alzheimer's disease. Dementia is usually the sum of a lot of different "insults" to the brain. So start at your baseline intelligence, then take away the brain that died with any damage done. Little strokes ("vascular dementia") are a big contributor, and smoking, high blood pressure and high cholesterol all promote them. (Folic acid and vitamin B6 are showing promise at reducing/preventing this problem.) Shear damage to neuronal axons, like with a fall off a horse (President Reagan) or boxing or football will take you down a notch. This makes the dementia more obvious. Dementia can be rated by several scales, but the most common is the Mini Mental Status Exam (MMSE). As dementia progresses, it can be treated with some novel medications that (simplisticly) amplify the signals through the damaged brain. In spite of the pun in my "subject", dementia is no laughing matter, and would be a fate worse than death in many people's minds. People with dementia usually don't have insight into the problem, though. They continue blissfully unaware of their forgetfullness. It is most stressful for their family. I am a doctor, (IAAD?) btw. Regards.
"Ignorance is not innocence, but sin." --Robert Browning
I knew it, I fucking was saying this all along, now I am waiting for the artical saying staying up all night online improves your health as well
Except when I tell people about the good effects of a Mocha from my Yahoo account they wind up drinking Expresso? Of course this could be a media insert from Starbucks. I wonder if someone got Minority Report confused with an actual NEWS item. Lately that's been happening a lot, especially off FOX and NBC.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Assumtion is the mother of all fuckups. - Under Siege 2
Please post any and all information you can. People always bitch about how the government engages in "disinformation", because people "have the right to know". Well, don't do yourself on accident what you don't want them doing on purpose.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Isn't it more likely that you will die from a stroke earlier if you drink coffee hence not live as long as a non coffee drinker and hence not have as high a chance of getting Alzheimers?
Now where did I put those Penguin Mints?
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Yes, our pop cans come with a paint thinner under the brand name of Coca-Cola
"PLEASE MOD PARENT UP"
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Caffine is an alcaloid. Alcaloids are known to be psychoactive, and in small quantities almost all are stimulants. There is a vast array of research into Alcaloids and their effects on the brain. Most of the researchers tend to say that, under the proper usage environment, philosophy, and conditions, these chemicals can be very beneficial. Terrence McKenna (crackpot? perhaps) was convinced that they contributed to the dawn of language and logic in human and human ancestors. Check out the link above for some more information on caffine and other alcaloids.
I remember a co-worker came by with a 6-pack of A&W Cream Soda. He said he loved the stuff, but now couldn't drink it, because it now had caffeine, which he couldn't handle well. The cans had these words on them: "Now with Caffeine!" He only noticed it after he'd brought the stuff in to work. Of course, I just chugged the stuff down.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
I drink like 4 coffees a day and a bottle of cola.
Interesting theory. Moderate doses of caffeine have long been known to have positive effects on learning and memory, at least in rats running mazes -- which seems similar enough to programmers navigating cubicle farms that we can be confident the results should generalize ;-)
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
There are a slew of other chemicals in coffee so perhaps one of these or a combination of many might be the key. There really isnt a way to test this though.
I just realized that I'm going to have to find some new bad habits. My old bad habits all turning out to be good for me. Coffee prevents alzheimers and red wine prevents heart disease. What's next? Sitting in front of a computer monitor prevents skin cancer?
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Seems like half my family is being diagnosed with Alzheimers, and every one of them drank coffee all day, everyday. Considering my poor genes in this area, can I have pure caffeine intravenously pumped into my bloodstream in hopes of delaying my on onset of the ailment?
Javaheads, Rejoice! I mean coffee drinkers, not Java programmers. While the people who tell is coffee is bad for us will lose their minds, and and be drooling on themselves by age 60, we will still have our minds. Make that a triple espresso!
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
You bastard! Now you got me wondering what Jon Katz is going to be like lecturing his grandkids:
"Ah, yes, I still remember where I was when I watched the two towers come down on 9/11. That was a life changing event, I tell you. Back in my day, people actually tried to help each other out instead of withdrawing into these confangled virtual reality contraptions you kids play with these days. Hey, sit down Jeffery and listen. I ain't done with my story yet. Maybe you'll learn somethin'. Now where was I? Oh yes, that Coumbine shooting was a life changing event, I tell you. Did I ever tell you about that? I did? Well, I'm gonna tell you again so quit your squirming an' listen up. Now the important thing was that I was wearing an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. We did it to protest the growing threat of globalism..."
GMD
watch this
I can't remember how many cups of coffee I've had today.
"Teachers leave us kids alone
Coffee is still bad for you. However, there are many other sources of caffeine that are safer than coffee. I, personally, am going to lose my mind, unless of course they find out marijuana prevents alzheimers (it has been found to be neuroproductive after all).
Zoot!
Wait...Who are you? What are you doing here? Where's my Jimmy?
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
Yeah, it'll save you from Alzheimers, but what about that heart attack at the age of 28 ?!
The Natural Health society magazine I readm ">free radicals</A> assisted by metals (Al and Fe mostly) are major contributors to alzheimers.
a nts in Tea</A> are the more likely preventer than the Caffeine.
suggests that <A HREF = "http://www.zool.canterbury.ac.nz/freeradicals.ht
It seems to me that the <A HREF = "http://www.clubtea.com/teahealth.html">anti-oxid
Note that the article establishes tea as a preventer, there is no link in it between what's in the tea, as they admit they don't know.
I suppose my grandfather was the other fourty percent. Although he drank alot of coffee, I still watched his condition deteriorate over five years, until his life finally ended (though rather abruptly, however welcomed due to his current state of mind) due to pneumonia.
I watched him completely forget his surroundings, even forget who his own family was. I remember the last Christmas I spent with him; he was just a mindless body confused and frustrated by the fact that he could not understand anything that went on around him.
So I guess that coffee might help, but watching my grandfather experience Alzeihmer's even as a coffee drinker leaves me a bit skeptical (I know, I know, other factors play into it as well, such as genetics and other lifestyle factors, but still...)
void women (int money, time_t time);
I suffer from a chemical imbalance that causes an anxiety disorder. Because of this, I can't really tolerate coffee. I drink tea, about 3 cups a day, which is about the equivalent of one cup of coffee. I'm screwed. I can handle the coffee just fine with valium, so I guess I just need to get my doctor to give me enough valium to support drinking 3 cups of coffee a day :-)
If 3 cups a day == 60% reduction, then my 6 cups a day must mean 120% reduction! Not only will I not forget things, I'll remember things I never learned in the first place!
Medicine is full of "proven" (and later disproven) ideas and treatments.
Often these things start out as something that seems intuitively obvious, but later turns out to have unintended consequences. Examples abound in lot of areas:
politics... (raising taxes SHOULD produce more revenue... oops, maybe not),
consuming... (I bought this super cheap, I got a deal! What? Whaddya mean it's stolen??)
computing... (it's the latest version of Windows, but it's less stable than the last version!).
The difference in medicine is that you deal with peoples' lives, and you have a pack of lawyers yipping at your heels all the time. Medicine involves multi-billion dollars, and makes big news when it turns out that some well-intentioned treatment was costing people their lives... also makes great grist for the trial lawyer mill. Anyone remember silicon breast implants and the supposed link to autoimmune disease? All bunk... but it made a lot press, and a lot of people made a lot of money over the scare.
Makes the argument for evidence-based medicine pretty compelling... it also makes you want to ask "why" we do things (never underestimate the power of dogma).
I'd take this study with a grain of salt... few physicians worth their salt base their practice and/or advice on a single study.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Caffeine May Reduce Alzheimers
Sure that may be true, but caffeine will also shorten your life a hell of a lot. Maybe people who drank caffeine just died before they had a chance to get alzheimers...
neuroproductive? not in the "test subjects" i've observed :P
This is not the greatest sig in the world, no. This is just a tribute.
...usage can reduce the risk of Alzheimers, geek caffiene intake must be able to reverse it. Some geeks consume enough caffeine to not only prevent their own Alzheimers, but to cure anyone within three hops from them.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
Wow, without Alzheimers I'll have all of my senses in peek performance for my experiences with ulcers, heart disease, mood swings, and blood coming out of my butt at 75. Bring it on ;)
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
In an effort to improve my health I haven't had any coff... damn I forgot what I was going to type.
My mother-in-law was a waitress for most of her adult life and a total caffine addict, 3-4 POTS of coffee a day, she got headaches if she didn't get enough caffine. When she couldn't have coffee she'd have Mountain Dew or really, really strong tea.
Now she has rapidly-advancing Alzheimer's and it's not a pretty sight. She's in perfect physical health, strong heart & lungs and may last another 5 years until her brain deteriorates to the point where it forgets how to breathe.
She's only been diagnosed with Alzheimer's in the last 2 years and she's already forgotten her children, husband, and grandchildren. She can't dress herself, can barely feed herself (you have to keep reminding her to pick up the spoon and eat) and will sometimes hold animated, rambling, incoherent conversations with inanimate objects. Yet somehow she still remembers her dog, who stays loyally by her side, her constant companion.
It's a sad, sad disease and reminds me of what my grandmother once told me when I was small, "There are things worse than death and scarier, too." I didn't understand then, but I do now.
They may be onto something, but I'll be a bit sceptical until they do more research. And I'll still have another cup of coffee or two. Not necessarily because I believe it will help (My aunt has Alzheimer's as well, she's always in a fetal position and totally unresponsive now.) but because I enjoy it. (And some days I NEED it. Sleep? What's that?)
Beta sux! Join the Slashcott! http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4760465&cid=46173047
I found out the hard way that too much caffeine does *not* reduce unemplplplplplployment.
Table-ized A.I.
My mom had Alzheimer's at age 55 and she drank about 3-4 cups of coffee every day her whole life.
If you are intelligent note this in the article:
"The UK Alzheimers Society urged caution in interpreting the findings, saying studies examining the link between dementia and diet and lifestyle could give a clearer understanding."
Alzheimers runs in my family, both of my grandfathers had it. After reading your report, I started to eat pure taster choice straight from the bottle. Now I remember all those painfull childhood momories I blocked out. My dog getting run over, my best friend moving, when i crapped my pants during gym... /me runs away crying :..-(
waugh, no alzheimers for tweek, sweet jesus, waugh!
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Well, just one more reason to order another case of Bawls
Check out this article.
Zoot!
It's traditional in these situations to say "MODERATORS ON CRACK".
Seriously, the poor lil' Java icon never gets used for anything. Last I remember was an Ask /. about office-scale coffee makers.
;)
How can we expect the technology to survive if we don't keep it out in the public?
it's not the coffee, it's the bunk."
(relavency links)
*honk*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
So stop cooking with aluminum pots and pans.
Not that us geeks know how to cook. Might be useful for those "other" people, though.
Sorry I don't have a URL to back this up. It's late, and you can use Google just as well as I can.
"I'll say it again for the logic-impaired." -- Larry Wall.
I would take three cups of coffee a day, if only I could remember what coffee is...
IANAL, but imagine a beowulf cluster of in Soviet Russia all your belong are base to us welcoming the new SCO overlords.
For starters a research group of 54 people with and 54 without the disease does not strike me as being a very large group to be carrying out life-style and diet statistics on. Especially when you are making the occurrence of the disease 50% in the "virtual population". By introducing such a composition you actually risk over-emphasizing the coffee drinking effect.
On another note it may simply be that the people in the study who drank lots of coffee were associated with ie. high demanding jobs. Now before you even start climbing up on that high horse, I'm NOT saying that people who are unfortunate enough to be diagnosed with Alzheimers are stupid or less intelligent. However, there has been research that suggest that people who work in an environment where they carry out a variety of tasks, and are forced to change the way they think frequently are less likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimers. And I could easily imagine that people in such positions would be more likely to grab an extra cup of coffee.
-.sig sauer-
Or it could just be that the people that had alzheimer's could not remember drinking all of that coffee...
IIRC they often find aluminum buildup in the brain plaque associated with this disease, but to my knowledge they don't even know that the plaque is responsibible for the symptoms (I think I saw some recent results on Science Daily which suggests another mechanism is causal) and they certainly haven't linked the plaque buildup with possible sources of aluminum in the diet. Last time I checked this was nothing more than an urban myth.
I would say it is prudent not to cook highly acidic food in aluminum pots, but I seriously doubt that the amount of aluminum ingested from your aluminum rice cooker is a factor in this disease.
New research shows that healthy elderly people, with no signs of the brain disease, had consumed an average of three to four cups a day since the age of 25. However, those with the debilitating illness drank, on average, just one cup of coffee each day.
There are hundreds of uncommon chemicals in coffee. The article doesn't present any evidence that it's the caffeine in coffee that is producing the beneficial effect, just that there's a correlation between coffee and reduced alzheimers.
The article goes on to state:
Scientists found people with alzheimers drank 74mg of caffeine a day - the equivalent of one cup of coffee or two to three cups of tea. Those without the disease averaged 200mg a day.
but these measurements are clearly bogus, since this is a retrospective study which never actually measured the caffeine content of the coffee the users have ingested over the years. They're simply taking the average caffeine content of a cup of coffee and doing a bit of multiplication.
Of course, to really find out, you'd have to do a study of regular coffee drinkers vs. decaf drinkers, and decaf hasn't been available long enough to properly do such a study. Even then, most decaffeination processes use nasty chemicals or excessive heat, which will alter the whole chemical balance anyhow. So, you'd really have to do a long term study of straight caffeine supplementation vs. null, and, my, science is hard.
I, of course, don't receive the European Journal of Neurology, but this really sounds like, "Coffee is beneficial, it must be the caffeine, yay!, we don't have to feel bad about being addicts."
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Caffiene can also be attriuted to a number of heart conditions. So are we to say that most people die before they get it?
reducing your risk != you will not get it.
The first thing I thought when I read this article was 'hey, my grandfather drank coffee constantly,' too. Then I read the headline again and it all made sense.
You can run 10 miles a day. Hell, you can be a pro athlete. You could still have a heart attack at any moment.
IANAMD.
Oooooh yes... I've actually been considering writing to the company and seeing if they'd consider making a new version- non-sugar-free Penguin Mints. Really, I'd rather have the disgusting amount of sugar than be eating what basically amount to chunks of sorbitol with caffeine and flavoring. I love them, but they give me the worst stomach aches, so I've simply stopped buying them. I can get my caffeine others ways, if I must. I don't quite get the point of making them sugar-free anyway, really... after all, they're hardly breath mints. They don't exactly leave you with nice minty-fresh breath. More of a strange caffeine aftertaste.
Has anyone ever looked at the MSDS or any data sheets on caffeine? The stuff is extremely toxic, it is a hazdarous material. I do not drink soft drinks or coffee because of it.
I'm really getting sick of these experts who are influenced by $$$$. Caffeine is no good for you, just because you don't use a toxic substance in concentrated form, doesn't mean it won't kill you. One thing that is worse is aspartame, it is even more toxic, and cancerous above a concentration of 0.1%.
Amazing how other experts can't find the reason for the rise in cancer levels....