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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.
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 .
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
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-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
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
Bah, 60%! Having a fatal heart attack reduces your risk of having Alzheimers by 100%! So get back to that high-fat diet! ;)
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Oh bother.
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)
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?
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
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)
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."
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
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?)
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