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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."
That's super news!
Being that there's coffee in Kahlua I can rest assured that when I have cirrhosis induced jaundice I won't have to suffer through the ravages of Type II diabetes!
oh.. there are only 2 Fs in "Caffeine", Taco. Please get it right when you dupe the story in 2 hours.
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men's risk of heart-attack raised 70% and woman's height decreased 25%
I wonder if it's because those who drank a lot of coffee throughout the day consumed less refined sugar. Many put some sugar in their coffee, but if they're getting a boost in energy from the coffee maybe they lay off the snacks.
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Men who drank 6 cups of coffee a day lowered their risk by 50%
I drink so much coffee, the people around me must have a lowered risk of diabetes, just by proximity.
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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".
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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.
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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.
Atkins diet. Jeebus H. Christ. I swear if i hear that phrase one more time I'm going to lose it. It's everywhere. Menu's at resturaunts have "Atkins Friendly" sections now.
Whatever ever happened to a balanced diet? Atkins seems to me to be swinging the pendulum more and more away from equilibrium.
Pop culture diets: "Eat no carbs!" "Wait! You need carbs!" "Eat nothing but carbs!" "Wait, carbs are bad!" "Eat only protien!" "Eat anything but barf it up!"
rant not directed towards you, neiffer. just a rant. whatever to get your diabetes in control. People with a medical condition, maybe something like Atkins is a good thing. but for people who think they are fat, and don't want to excercise, a little more balance would seem better.
There actually is a pretty good rationale for low carb dieting. I'll try to sum up two major lines of evidence:
First, carbs didn't make up a large part of the human diet until the invention of agriculture about 10,000 years ago. Sugars and starchs are simply not available in large consistenet quantities to hunter/gatherers dominant for the previous 90,000 years. Studies comparing the remains of pre-agricultural people and agricultural people show that diabetes and heart disease only appear in populations once agriculture is introduced. The correlation was shown not to be an effect of lifespan. today, cultures such as the Inuit exist on nearly carb free diets and show a similar absence of diabetes and heart disease.
Second, carbs are nearly instantaneously converted to glucose by the digestive system. Where the digestive system easily discards unneeded fat and protein, glucose enters the blood stream very quickly. Excessively high glucose levels are toxic to the brain, so glucose triggers an insulin response. Insulin triggers the fat cells to remove glucose and store it, and it triggers the liver to remove glucose and store it as cholesterol. By removing the carb component of the diet, the body needs to produce its own glucose. The glycogen response triggers the fat cells to release stored glucose into the blood stream and it triggers the liver to convert cholesterol to glucose. Low carb dieting causes the body to spend most time in a glycogenic state, which means the body is burning fat and cholesterol as fuel. Hence, less fat and cholesterol.