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Caffeine vs Type II Diabetes
OctaneZ writes "New research out of the Harvard School of Public Health indicates that coffee may lower your risk of Type II Diabetes. Men who drank 6 cups of coffee a day lowered their risk by 50%, while womens risk dropped 30%. The release also includes audio discussions about the suprising findings."
Does drinking 6 cups of coffee a day reduce Type II diabetes
OR
Does drinking 6 cups of coffee a day supress hunger so people eat less, and therefore weigh less, which reduces the chance of Type II diabetes?
In my head, it's more the latter than any "wonder of coffee" - kind of like how a few years ago it was "red wine reduces heart attacks! Drink up, kids!", which then moved to "oh, well, grape juice does the same thing - it's all because of the antioxidants".
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
I am hypoglycemic and one thing that really straightens out my blood sugar/insulin is caffeine. When drinking coffee it's a lot more stable and doesn't fluctuate nearly as bad.
Some claim caffeine helps for Parkinsons disease too
One thing to note is that a lot of the reports I read saying that coffee leads to diabetes type 2 also imply that the coffee is consumed together with some kind of carbohydrate-laced food, usually cakes or something. It is also equally important to note that there are a large number of athletes and serious exercisers who use coffee as a performance enhancer; they tend to not have diabetes type 2 and they tend not to consume their coffee with performance-undermining cakes.
What I would like to see are more reports taking these factors into account.Compare people who drink just coffee with people who drink coffee and eat cake. Compare people who drink coffee and exercise vigorously on a regular basis with people who drink coffee and sit on the couch all day. Let's get rid of all the double-messages and ambiguities.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
Side effects of caffeine include:
Anger is perhaps the symptom I've seen the most in other people. It's due to the fact that caffeine causes the adrenal glands to dump their load--you feel energized by caffeine specifically because you've gotten an adrenaline rush. But andrenaline also causes anger because it brings on the "fight or flight" syndrome. Therefore one of the worst places to work is in a place with lots of caffine addicts--they tend to get on each others' nerves.
Caffine causes other stress hormones to be released. The net effect is that you end up feeling tired because you've been feeling stressed out by caffeine. Most people end up taking caffeine to deal with caffeine's side effects.
It takes two weeks for caffeine to completely leave your body.
Make fun of Atkins all you like, but for those of us that have type II diabetes, it's a powerful tool to control our blood sugar. I've lost enough weight on Atkins that my sugar readings are "normal" as long as I stick to the diet. If I eat more than about 20 grams of carbs at one sitting, or about 45 - 50 grams a day, my blood sugar goes way up. Studies have shown that good sugar control postpones and reduces the onset of diabetic complications. Basicly, the carbs kill diabetics faster than the fat & cholesterol.
Many people mistake Atkins induction level with the "atkins diet". Induction is a 2 week phase. It is not a balanced diet, and you're not supposed to stay on it forever. Atkins at maintenance levels resembles The Zone diet.
Interestingly, caffeine also seems to have a neuroprotective effect when it comes to Parkinson's (here's an article even the most java-addled ./er should be able to get through).
Also interesting: nicotine has an even stronger neuroprotective effect against Parkinson's. And what's really weird: smokers metabolize caffeine about twice as fast as nonsmokers (nobody's really sure why). Next time your pretentious smoker buddy starts bragging about how much coffee he cranks, you might mention this. He's got a biochemical advantage.
I don't smoke, and I wouldn't advise doing it as part of your health regimen, but nicotine's interations with caffeine are kind of intriguing.
After 30 years of messing with people's diets, the average citizen is now keenly aware that the medical establishment doesn't know jack shit about what they should eat. People will try anything now.
There is some truth to the Atkins diet, but its now some sick industry. People should just go back to eating the way we did 50 years ago. Just watch a 50's TV show sometime. Get some Depression era photographs. People LOOKED healthy back then. It is very clear.
Remember, the same bureaucrats who created dietary guidelines also revolutionized the educational system and thought housing projects would eliminate poverty. The sad fact is diet fads are one of the last idealistic trends of the 1960's. Like everything else of that era, it was wrong and destructive.
I don't read or respond to AC posts