Slashdot Mirror
Daily Caffeine Protects Your Brain
Chroniton writes "The BBC has a story that many Slashdot geeks will be happy to hear: the caffeine from a cup of coffee a day can help prevent Dementia, by blocking the damage of cholesterol. (At least in rabbits) This is in addition to the already-known protection against Alzheimer's Disease. More research is needed to test the effect on humans."
Old news flash: most stuff is okay as long as you enjoy it in moderation. If your coffee percolater feeds directly into an IV line then you probably aren't doing your body any good, but one or 2 cups a day and she'll be 'right.
which is totally what she said
...anyone who goes into Starbucks and pays £2.50 for a cup of ground beans in a bit of hot water and hot milk, must have a screw loose!
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
It's the same bloody thing with just about everything we intake these days. The newage crazies versus the scientists versus the governments are in a battle. A battle for brainwashing the living shit out of us. In the end we'll all just have to accept that we believe pretty much anything anyone tells us.
This week coffee's good for you, next week it's bad for you.
This week a glass of wine a day prevents altzheimers, last week that was classed as binge drinking and caused high blood pressure.
This week sausages cause cancer, no doubt next week they'll help prevent MS.
It's all a load of old cock. And no doubt a load of old cock either causes or prevents heart disease (depending which week you take your old cock).
simon
most cholesterol is produced in you body and has little to do with what you eat e.g. some people can eat stake all day and be fine other can eat nothing but lattice and have a cholesterol problem.
Studies on eggs have show that they make no difference and infact a bit more exercise would help a world more than changing you diet.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
It's the media. They take a single study and purport it to be some kind of fact. Science doesn't work that way. Science only considers something 'known' when independent study after independent study shows the same thing to be true, and no studies which may have been contradictory have been shown to contradict the findings.like it's going to stop anyone drinking it anyway...
These things take time. Looking at one study alone can be interesting, but it's stupid to take that study's findings as gospel truth.
My blog
This is so unfortunately true. Health fads are all about misinterpretation of the available data, and incomplete data for that matter. Every time there's some news item about the supposed health benefits of something, some idiot takes it to an extreme. Shortly thereafter conflicting data is released and suddenly everything we thought we knew was wrong. Eggs used to be heathy, then they were poisonous, now they're healthy again.
Nobody is going to live forever because of some nutritional change. If you eat a wide variety of fresh unprocessed foods you'll do fine. Everything in moderation.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
Coffee helps protect against dementia.
But, it leeches calcium from your bones.
Still, it avoids erectile dysfunction.
However, it destroys a good night's sleep.
Yet it can keep you thin.
But, it might make you take up smoking...
And so on, forever and ever, until people admit that even scientists recognize the world is more complicated than a single factor at a time.
technical writing / development
Does it annoy anybody else that a cup of coffee is a standard in and of itself? A 12 cup coffee maker only makes 12, 5 oz. cups. Since when is 5 oz. equal to a cup? A measuring cup is 8 oz. the and cup that most people use for coffee is probably around 10-16 oz. So, in this study, do they mean the 5 oz. cup, the 8 oz. cup, or the 16 oz. cup?
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
a bit more exercise would help a world more than changing you diet.
...and therein lies the problem with these stories. Forgive my cynicism, but all us 'Mericans are much more inclined to binge on something we already like (coffee, wine, green tea, chocolate) than to lift our fannies off the couch and go for a walk.
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Opium was used as a treatment for disentery, arsenic for leukemia, nitroglycerin for some heart problems.
The bottom line is everything can potentially be a cure or a poison depending on proportion (Even water can be a mortal poison).
The truth is that we still suck when it comes to nutritional science. Mostly because it's hard to do proper science when your subject lives as long as you do.
There is in fact a body of knowledge that says that exercise itself is good for the brain's health, and preventing dementia.
Back on the "all things in moderation" kick, exercise certainly seems to be one of them, but in this case I think "moderation" for exercise is indeed a higher dose than most of us consider. I've heard that marathons are actually hard on the body, and shouldn't be done too often, and I suspect that hard-core bodybuilding is a bit much, but most of us never really approach excessive exercise.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
If people spent half as much energy worrying about their exercise regimen as they do fretting about whether they should eat carbs or not, people in general would be a lot healthier.
This isn't entirely true. The general public doesn't give enough consideration to their health in general. Neither diet NOR physical activity are given enough attention as we all eat far too many refined carbohydrates and saturated fats AND lead sedentary lives that just aggravate the situation.
I know people who lead physically active lives (typically having physically demanding jobs), are not the slightest bit overweight (quite lean builds in fact) and by outward appearances look physically healthy...but they skip breakfast, and eat cheeseburgers and fries for lunch and supper every day and smoke moderately. They get sick more often and are the types of people who have digestion problems and end up being the people in conversations like "HE had a heart attack? But he looked so healthy!"
Diet certainly IS very important. The problem is that we eat very badly, and when we focus on diet we don't eat balanced diets--we go on "extreme atkins" or try to eat like Jarod or eat carefully, artificially-portioned pre-packaged meals like Nutrisystem so we can lose weight and "look nice".
Diet is JUST AS IMPORTANT as physical activity; you CANNOT say "Oh, I work out every day so I can eat just about anything". Though physical activity provides the most impact on metabolism and many other health factors, it is DIET that has the largest impact on weight. Think about it: It takes mere seconds to a couple of minutes to eat a chocolate bar, which cancels out the calories you expend on 20 minutes of medium-to-intense cardio activity. It's well known that losing weight and/or increasing % of lean body mass has a notable impact on harmful cholesterol...so if you want to lose weight and be more healthy don't use exercise as an excuse to eat those sugar and fat-laden chocolate bars.
Quality of life is a valid reason for drinking coffee, etc.. There are a bunch of poor saps out there starving themselves because of some study showing that mice on a severely calorie restricted diet live 50% longer. Personally I'd prefer laughing from my deathbed while eating an ice cream sundae, but that's just me. Seriously, do these nitwits really believe this finding is directly transferrable from mice to humans? How about at least waiting for a study involving actual primates? How about enjoying your life? Scallops wrapped in bacon anyone?
Coffee is a great example: a while back someone did a meta analysis and found the studies were basically a wash. Do what you want in moderation. I like to roast my own coffee, grind it immediately prior to brewing, french press it nice and strong and drink it with a lot of cream but no sugar. I don't drink every day but when I do I want to really enjoy it.
Besides, whats the point of indulging if you dont indulge? Diet ice cream? Give me a break!
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.