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Daily Caffeine Protects Your Brain

Posted by samzenpus on from the it's-what-brains-crave dept.

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."

5 of 325 comments (clear)

  1. god damn it by timmarhy · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Just make up your fucking minds already, every other week coffee is bad, then good, then bad again.

    like it's going to stop anyone drinking it anyway...

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    1. Re:god damn it by stranger_to_himself · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's the media. They take a single study and purport it to be some kind of fact.

      It also seems to be the case that the less applicable your study, the more coverage you get. It's running joke now in epidemiology that you get more impact and coverage by showing a potential mechanism in 10 rabbits than you do by demostrating a genuine preventive effect in a population study of 100000 people.

    2. Re:god damn it by Eivind · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Won't work. Most of the cholesterol in your body is PRODUCED by your body, not obtained from ingested food.

      Indeed there's some controversy in medical-science circles currently over to what degree food-cholesterol (like in eggs) influence blood-cholesterol at all.

      Regardless of how that particular debate ends though, you'll have cholesterol in your blood even if you eat -zero- of it.

    3. Re:god damn it by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The claims are interesting as just casual observation of old people 69-100 does not correlate with their findings. The people with dementia are from a generation that Coffee was drank for every reason and occasion. Hell even the Military gave them coffee in their C-rations it was available everywhere, even in the great depression the poor in the streets had coffee available to them from the aid workers and rescue missions. Coffee in my parents and grandparents age gap was more prevalent in their lives than it is today in society.

      I really wish they would publish more detailed information and also started going to aged people asking questions to see who drank a cup at least a day. The human research has been done, just nobody has bothered to ask the experiment members for the results.

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    4. Re:god damn it by Hatta · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Interestingly enough, drinking coffee can cause higher cholesterol, even though it contains none. French press coffee contains cafestol which seems to boost the body's production of cholesterol (or inhibit the degredation, it's not clear). There's a measurable dose dependent effect, so as much as it pains me I've quit drinking French press coffee in favor of drip, a paper filter seems to bind the cafestol and remove it.

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