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
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.
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.
The problem is that folks generally have this view that they could never run a marathon, so why run at all (extend that to any given sport)? The answer is to recognize that pretty much anyone can improve their fitness from where it's at today, and it's amazing to see how quickly the body can become accustomed to an increased level of activity, so long as the increase is kept within reasonable bounds. Being more fit makes just about every daily activity more fun and less stressful, and it amazes me that in so many of the 'self-help' TV shows that are on the tube these days, they turn to surgery for what is really just a lack-of-exercise problem.
Less is more.