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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.'"
... Why computer programmers and other cube dwellers are always the picture of health and fitness!
In addition, the yellow teeth you get will prevent you from getting STDs!!
:).
As if us Slashdotters need any additional help with that
my blog
Beh. Both programmers and sysadmins are supposed to never ingest any healthy stuff, so I guess that coffee is out of the question then.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
I knew I was right when they tried to take take my coffee away from me!
Sparks:Gadget:Beer Maker
ihavebeensayingforyearsthatdrinkinglotsofcoffeeisa goodthinganditsnothingtoworryabout. /Deeeep breath /twitch twitch
...unite! Demand to be viewed as demi-gods of health and prosperity!
Shit, I had just convinced my boss to replace the expresso machine for a wine cooler...
I knew there was a reason that coffee was so goddamn expensive !!
StupidChildren...the reason jesus is crying
Us seattlites really needed another reason to drink coffee.
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
Does this study factor in all the other ingredients that make up coffee? It doesn't do good to say it gives you a lot of anti-oxidents, while some other chemicals give you some bad benefits. Kind of cancelling out.
Well, study showed the same about alcohol.
It doesn't mean getting drunk every day is a healthy thing to do, as is maintaining a caffeïne addiction. Moderation in things is key I believe.
I just know that quitting the whole coffee-addiction had benefits for me personally.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
From the article:
But Professor Vinson urged moderation, recommending that people should drink only one or two cups of coffee per day.
A spokesman for the British Coffee Association said: "This study reconfirms the fact that moderate coffee consumption of four to five cups a day not only is perfectly safe but may confer health benefits."
A disconnect between science and industry if I ever I saw.
Then we have: 1 glass of wine a day + 3 cups of coffee a day + A hanful of bugs = Healthiest person ever!
//WR
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."
The key bit here is "to the diet". This doesn't make coffee a health food, it means the collective we don't eat enough of the healthy stuff. Yet another misrepresentation of research and thanks to Slashdot for picking it up. I eagerly await the modded funny posts.
Feeling so good natured I could drool
The study was funded by the American Cocoa Research Institute. Make of that what you may.
Compared to a lot of the "alcohol is good for you" hype that I've seen, the article is actually pretty balanced. Still, this kind of thing makes me uncomfortable.
fish and pipes
I try and drink 2 glasses of Tea a day. Also try blueberries. Boysenberries taste great but aren't listed.
i tamin_pills_really_work.php
m
i oxidants.htm
Oh yeah , Vitamins may not work and make corporations rich.
http://www.diet-blog.com/archives/2005/08/05/do_v
List of most powerful antioxidant fruit and vegetable.
http://www.mdsupport.org/library/antiox.html
http://my.webmd.com/content/Article/104/107639.ht
http://altmedicine.about.com/cs/supplements/a/ant
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5489179/
Any substance that, when withdrwn from, gives you headaches, the sweats and severe drowsiness can be classified as a toxin to the body. Likewise, caffeine is habit-forming, intensifies feelings of anxiety, can produce insomnia, stains teeth etcetera.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
Now I only wait for the scientists to confirm my lifelong suspicion, that chocolate (especially chocolate covered wafer bars) is a healthy vegetable product (chocolate is made from fruit, isn't it?) that should be a cornerstone of a healthy diet.
That's funny because everytime I drink coffee, I feel like my heart is going to explode.
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
And if you REALLY want a health benefit, switch to decaf. Sorry, I know everyone wants to pretend what they do is fine or healthy and wants to find that reason why, but some things are just bad for you(Fast food for example, although we all eat it anyways). Just because coffee has anti-oxidants doesn't mean that it will prevent cancer. Caffeine is pro-inflammatory, so most likely those anti-oxidants will be reducing damage of the caffeine.
Don't wanna give up caffeine? No problem. Still want to reduce your risk of cancer, have some real food. Steam some kale, have an apple, some berries(Not Apple-Berry Poptarts, not the same thing). Just add a few veggies or fruits to your daily food intake and you'll be a lot better for it. Cut something out, or reduce, and you'll be even better. Don't have to give up coffee/caffeine, but it isn't some miracle health food, and don't think of it as such.
Too much of a good thing is NEVER beneficial. ... Except sex, that is.
Chafing.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Junk food does not make you fat, it's all down to fresh OJ, smoking can help you to live longer (assuming you do not get lung cancer) and being in a road accident helps reduce the signs of aging.
-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
until we get research proving the long-obvious health benefits of mountain dew.
starbucks llc has acquired slashdot.org from it's previous corporate parents
so welcome to slashbucks
cappuccino for nerds. macchiato that matters.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
Antioxidents are a new fad, and while we might stipulate there is some validity to eating antioxidants, its a mistake to equate antioxidents in any particular food as being significant. The problem is that these studies never take into account total antioxidant intake in the diet.
For example, while coffee and tea do have antioxidents in them, you'd have to drink dozens of gallons to equal what you get from a little bit of oregano (one of the foods with the highest antioxidant contant,far higher than blueberries). In fact, there are many many foods that have giant doses of antioxidents in them. If you look at your actual overall diet, it is unlikely that coffee would ever be a significant source of antioxidents. And if in fact it is, and you are concerned about antioxidents in your diet, you'd do better to add a higher source into your diets.
For example, cherries, blueberries, dried plums, artichokes, russet potatoes, red cabbage, walnuts, pecans, hazelnuts, cinnamon, and cloves.
>>Coffee is a naturally grown product, thus does not have bad influence on your body
... and coca... and various nightshades... and peyote... and psylocybine mushrooms... and fugu... and ... and...
Just like opium
Come off it, you fucking hippie. Just because it grows out of the ground doesn't make it not bad for you.
L
I don't disagree with you, but I wouldn't say antioxidants are a new fad. People have been pushing them for at least a decade.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
"I don't mean to spoil the joy"
Yes you do.
I'd like to see some documentation for that statement that you seemed to pull out from under your tin-foil hat. I have never heard ANY evidence to even remotely suggest that dehydration causes cancer. Honestly, show me even one article froma reputable scientific journal, and I will deign to argue this point with you, otherwise you are wasting our time with nonsensical ideas, like pyramid power and homeopathy.
I'm fairly certain that I'm right- I know the literature, since I am an oncology surgeon.
..........FULL STOP.
Whoa, and I thought 4-5 cups a day was pushing it.
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
I didn't know there actually is people who believe that! I always thought it was a joke.
Mr. Cash202... Not everything which is naturally grown, is good for you. Most narcotic substances, for instance, are naturally grown. Alcohol, too. And formic acid (HCOOH). And amanita muscarita (also known as toadstool). Fat, my friend, is also grown naturally, but shouldn't be considered a very good diet.
Your body doesn't know whether a substance is natural or chemical. All chemical substances are natural as well - they're only made natural in a laboratory. They aren't supernatural. Your body is not tuned to eat every substance "out there".
Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base are belong to you
I'm more likely to think of my grandmother who died of emphysema/lung cancer and my uncle who drank himself to death. But looking at one person and ignoring the entire body of scientific evidence on the subject is probably pretty reasonable.
Slashdot editors have often been deceived by pseudo-science. One Slashdot story was about a new method of data compression that could compress data much more than other compression methods. Of course, it later was found to be completely false.
Some coffee company P.R. person was successful in making this study of little importance into a major news story.
--
Faith-based lying? Faith-based killing?
Caffeine is an alkaloid. Alkaloids were invented by plants to slow being eaten by insects. Caffeine does not kill insects, it just prevents them from eating much of the plant. Not all poisons kill.
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
KY
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Imagine a Bell curve. You just picked a statistical sample of one (Keith Richards) who happened to fall in the outer edges of the statistics. This does not change the fact that by taking care of yourself you can drastically lower the risk of getting cancer or other diseases. The risk is not 0% of course, you can still get unlucky.
If your conclusion (95% genetics) was right, why has life expectancy for some peoples in history been so low that being 40 years old was considered a venerable age? Do you really think human genes have changed that quickly?
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
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
www.ra
Coffee is a naturally grown product, thus does not have bad influence on your body
Curare is also a naturally grown product, and it's influence on your body is paralysis, leading to death as you no longer breathe.
I'll let you decide if that influence is good or bad... personally, I'm thinking it ain't great.
You can't take the sky from me...
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
If antioxydant is a topic that interest you -- you would want to read this too: http://www.mercola.com/blog/2005/aug/29/coffee_ame ricas_leading_source_of_antioxidants
I believe our bathroom here would beg to differ on the positive effects of coffee.
Micro$0ft funded the research along with a major coffee producing monopoly!!
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