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Coffee A Health Drink?
Yocto Yotta wrote to mention an article from The Independent which would seem to indicate that coffee has numerous health benefits, and could be construed to be a 'health drink'. From the article: "'A study has found that coffee contributes more antioxidants - which have been linked with fighting heart disease and cancer - to the diet than cranberries, apples or tomatoes...[antioxidants in coffee] have been linked to a number of health benefits, including protection against heart disease and cancer. Studies have associated coffee drinking with a reduced risk of liver and colon cancer, type two diabetes, and Parkinson's disease.'"
Is it just me or is this sort of thing said about everything we're told is bad for us every once and a while? I remember a while back i even heard people saying that cigarettes helped with alzheimer's or something here it is
Alzheimer's delayed by cigarettes
you could say the same of chocolate
...BLACK coffee ...NO sugar
;-P
except that chocolate, like coffee, is consumed with enough sugar and dairy to counteract any benefits you might be getting and then some
so bring on the coffee!
not so attractive anymore, eh?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Any substance that, when withdrwn from, gives you headaches, the sweats and severe drowsiness can be classified as a toxin to the body.
No, it cannot. "Toxin" has a precise definition, and it doesn't mean "anything that might cause negative effects in some situation". Merriam-Webster defines it as a poisonous substance that is a specific product of the metabolic activities of a living organism and is usually very unstable, notably toxic when introduced into the tissues, and typically capable of inducing antibody formation.
Caffeine is a drug, and an addictive one at that, but it isn't poisonous. Please stop watering down our language.
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-AT
Working in a DevOps shop is like playing in a band made up entirely of keytarists.
Recent studies have shown that there is a slight increase in blood pressure and heartrate when drinking the coffee, but it is only when drinking it. Let's say that I drink a cup in the morning, yes my bloodpressure will rise and so will the BPM, but when i leave for lunch, the heartrate will be the same as it was before i got my cup. I was a testperson in this study, at university at Copenhagen.
The first fricken thing I ever get on a hospital meal tray is a cup of coffee!!! And I have been in the hospital enough to have a good spectrum of meals. Coffee, no matter what is else on the tray, there is always Coffee!
mmmmmmm
"What we do in life echoes in eternity." Maximus Decimus Meridius
The actual evidence of *any* health benefit from dosing people with anti-oxidants (as opposed to fruits and vegetebles, which contain many other things besides anti-oxidants, for example fiber) is non-existent.
= Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=1603028 0&query_hl=5
In fact, it essentially proves that anti-oxidants either provide no benefit, or are bad for you.
Vitamin E and beta-carotene are both quite potent anti-oxidants (free radical scavengers.) Others are more or less potent, but Vitamin E and BC are both potent enough that you would see an effect if there is one.
Vitamin E has demonstrably no benefit in fighting heart disease. But thanks for playing!
Beta Carotene actually makes lung cancer appreciably *more* lethal - there is a good chance that this is because it is an anti-oxidant, and that pro-oxidants fight cancer.
READ THIS REVIEW BEFORE YOU ARGUE WITH ME:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd
The evidence that bleeding yourself with leeches is actually good for you is *far* more compelling than anything that has ever been delivered for anti-oxidants.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
You are joking right? The LD50 (level at which 50% of the pop. can be expected to die) from caffeine is only 1 or 2 grams.
I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers from, but the oral LD50 of caffeine is about 200mg/kg. An espresso contains about 80-100mg, so a person could theoretically drink 2x(body weight in kg) shots of espresso and still have a 50% chance of surviving.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
In the process of getting over it I learned that a massive number of people suffer ( silently ) in North America and the UK from chronic insomnia. I don't mean an occasional night without sleep that is slept off the next day, but chronic troubles getting and staying asleep.
A large number of reasons are lifestyle related. Caffeine use, being over-weight, bad sleep habits, and the way many of us live our lives.
As the article for this thread shows a lot of Americans like to drink a lot of coffee.
Americans also take in a significant amount of "hidden" caffeine through iced tea beverages, chocolates, cocoa, soft drinks ( 2 sodas == 1 cup of coffee ) and other drinks. Often Americans will consume these significant caffeine sources at later times in the day when they would not dare to have coffee or hot tea.
Coffee, on a regular basis, over years is also very hard on the human stomach and contributes to an early decline in digestive power which leads to a tougher time getting the nutrients a human body needs.
It is also a very environmentally destructive crop, severely depleting the soil where it is grown. A friend told me that South American farmers call it the "Vampire Crop".
If you want a concentrated source of antioxidants without caffeine try taking a tablespoon of organic ( to avoid getting pesticide residues ) citrus zest ( finely grated peel - the part of the peel with the color ) a week:
http://www.prevention.com/article/0,5778,s1-3-71-1 08-5616-1,00.html?
Fresh aromatic herbs area also a good source of concentrated antioxidants and cancer fighters. Use basil. It is cheap in season. It is basically a weed, is easily grown in a garden or in a pot in an apartment.
Eating cruciferous vegetables like the broccoli in Chinese food ( yay! ) will give you plenty of antioxidants. Other cruciferous vegetables that help are cabbage, collards, kale, mustard greens etc.
If you have regular trouble sleeping either with falling asleep, staying asleep, spontaneously getting up early, or not feeling rested see either a neurologist or a pulmonologist to rule out physical causes. Sleep apena is the number one physical cause and is mostly due to the weight problem Oceania is experiencing. People accumulate so much excess weight that some of it ends up in the throat region with the result of tissue sagging downwards while they sleep temporarily blocking their flow of air. The flow is unblocked with the brain forcing a brief awakening, often many times a night, often without the person knowing. Being overweight is not the only cause of sleep apena, but it accounts for the vast majority of cases.
The methods used to treat sleep apena are not pleasant. Avoid surgery. It has been found to only be 25% effective. However, losing weight can be very effective from individual to individual.
Like I wrote earlier most of sleeplessness is lifestyle related.
In other areas of our lives bad habits and stress are keeping many, many people awake.
Only use sleep medications in the short term.
Many are addictive and many ( not all ) only provide benefits for several weeks, this is true even for many of the prescription drugs.
Cognitive therapy has proven to be more effective than drugs in managing insomnia over the long term. It is cheap, shows results quickly and can be often be done on one's own after a little help.
One of the best books about improving sleep, getting rid of insomnia and getting off of medication for sleep was written by a Harvard psychologist who developed and studied his program over the course 10 years.
It combines the most effective( and prove
I strongly suspect that the reason that coffee drinkers tend to have a lower incidence of colon cancer has more to do with the less desirable effects of coffee. People who have diseases that predispose them to have colon cancer, such as ulcerative colitis, can't tolerate coffee as well as healthy individuals do. I suspect the same is true of many other conditions, such as irritable bowel disease.
It makes one wonder if many of these other claims can't be disregarded as well. Perhaps the fact that you can drink lots of coffee simply means you have a robust constitution that can tolerate more abuse. It doesn't mean you should go ahead and abuse it.
It is very easy to show statistical correlation, but not nearly so easy to show causation. They aren't one in the same.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
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Well, for every study, there have to be exceptions. Both my wife and I drink between 2 and 4 cups daily, and have for years. (Grow up in the military, and you really don't have a choice). I've had stage 4 colon cancer twice (1984 and 1999), and she's been a type 2 diabetic since 1993. Go figure!
The only other drug like this generally available is Nicotine. Sharpens you up, makes your thinking clearer and doesn't impair judgement.
The first government in the world to begin a public perception campaign to prevent the use of Nicotine? Why, that would be the Nazi Party. Why would they not want their populace thinking clearly, I wonder. . ?
Personally, I don't use either drug. I've never smoked or felt the need to. (It's pretty hard to find non-corporate tobacco these days. No big surprise there. If you can't stop people from smoking, then you'd better make sure the stuff they're smoking contains a ton of extra poisons in order to off-set any advantages.)
--And I have found recently that caffeine has changed how it affects me so I've stopped drinking it for the time being. I miss coffee, but in the last year especially, I've found I've gained access to a lot of new emotional bandwidth, (I don't really know how else to describe it; being a guy is getting complicated these days as the human race continues rapidly to wake up in interesting ways!), and I seem to need to work on managing this before I can go adding extra octane to my brain.
Without the coffee, I find I'm much more steady. Not quite my old self, but definitely better. Heck, with the java, I felt like I was pregnant or something. Sheesh!
-FL
It's not just the excersise, it saves lives. Computer systems around the globe would crash if IT Admins and developers didn't fuel themselves with coffee. Alertness during a crisis situation can be the difference between life and death, or the financial destruction of a company. Thank you coffee, and thank you Tim Horton.
"Antioxidants help to rid the body of harmful free radicals, destructive molecules that damage cells and DNA."
Technically free radicals aren't molecules. Free radicals are actually electrons a molecule gets rid of in order to stabilize itself.