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Coffee Consumption Strongly Linked To Preventing Alzheimer's
An anonymous reader writes "Those cups of coffee that you drink every day to keep alert appear to have an extra perk — especially if you're an older adult. A recent study monitoring the memory and thinking processes of people older than 65 found that all those with higher blood caffeine levels avoided the onset of Alzheimer's disease in the two-to-four years of study follow-up. Moreover, coffee appeared to be the major or only source of caffeine for these individuals."
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java the thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
124 people in the study is pathetic. Why wouldn't they get a bigger sample size for a study like this? Not like it should be difficult. Apparently a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine included over 400,000 older adults in similar study.
And the Japanese tea has this cool glow-in-the-dark ambiance...
You know, it is not all that hard to test for the presence of radioisotopes. Take a Geiger counter to your local tea shop and scan the Japanese teas if you are really concerned...
Palm trees and 8
Then, as a spelling Nazi, I assume you didn't actually mean "Unless they lose it somewhere.
... SMBC ;)
Had you for a second there, didn't I?
It's not that caffeine prevents Alzheimer's, caffeine dilates time itself. We live a lifetime of productive bliss in only a few moments. Why else do non-coffee drinkers never appear to age? In what feels like 60 years for us, only a short time passes for them. They look younger because they are younger. But, they also live long enough to get Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cancer. In a twist of irony our lives are shorter but our years are longer. We looked to the internet for the Singularity, but we should have looked inside. The Singularity is us.
The article says other sources of caffeine had no effect. So it's probably not the caffeine but some other coffee component. (Or maybe just the hot water.) Personally I'd rather eat dark chocolate than drink coffee (ick).
Yes, this is perhaps the important quote from the article:
Since 2006, USF’s Dr. Cao and Dr. Arendash have published several studies investigating the effects of caffeine/coffee administered to Alzheimer’s mice. Most recently, they reported that caffeine interacts with a yet unidentified component of coffee to boost blood levels of a critical growth factor that seems to fight off the Alzheimer’s disease process.
The interaction between the caffeine and the coffee component appears to produce something that is highly beneficial. Maybe it can be identified and synthesized and patented and sold in pill form. On the other hand, coffee is so cheap that it could be the generic version for those of us who don't mind drinking it.
Load up on SBUX stock! Doctors will be prescribing three cups a day and insurance will be paying for it!
From TFA:
Since 2006, USF’s Dr. Cao and Dr. Arendash have published several studies investigating the effects of caffeine/coffee administered to Alzheimer’s mice. Most recently, they reported that caffeine interacts with a yet unidentified component of coffee to boost blood levels of a critical growth factor that seems to fight off the Alzheimer’s disease process.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Honestly, as long as the point comes across you shouldn't really care.
But it didn't come across. I was about to google "florine" to find out what I had missed when I saw the GN's post. Because I'm not a phonetic reader, it never occurred to me that florine might be fluorine.
The devil is in the details. Being imprecise not only sends someone on a wild goose chase, but also means no distinction between fluorine, fluorene and fluoride, all of which are quite different things. And it's not fluorine that's thought to be a problem, but fluoride compounds, specifically hydrogen fluoride. It's as wrong as saying oxygen when you mean ozone.
They didn't do a random test, say "oh hey look coffee did something lets make wild conclusions". They worked from mice studies, the most recent in 2006, then specifically did a human test by taking people with minor cognitive impairment (which often progresses into Alzheimer's), they tested them for their blood caffeine levels, and looked for further cognitive decline. What they found was that in mice with Alzheimer's, coffee prevented further mental decline. And, in those mice, there was a specific and identifiable immune response connected with this effect. What they also found was that decaff coffee produced neither the protective effect, nor the correlated immune response. And caffeine alone or from other sources did not have this effect, either. This new 4 year study took patients and looked at their blood caffeine levels, and found that those who drink a lot of coffee had the SAME identifiable immune response as the mice did, and that this immune response is also strongly correlated with protecting from further mental decline in humans.
So, if you weren't paying attention, this isn't a correlation study, that isn't "conclusion section speculation". There's an identifiable response, they know this identifiable response doesn't occur with decaff, or with non-coffee caffeine sources, so they conclude it is some combination of caffeine with some unknown agent in coffee. But the actual response is identified. The correlation is not between coffee and Alzheimer's per se, but between Alzheimer's and this specific immune response that is almost certainly triggered by coffee, because although it's hard to do a controlled experiment with people, it's not hard to do with mice! And they did. Six years ago.
At any rate, what they don't know is what other chemical is causing this, how this response is protecting against cognitive decline, and if having smaller amounts of coffee will have a lesser effect, or be just plain ineffective. (Some people have quoted 3 cups of coffee per day, but TFA says 3 cups of coffee shortly before being tested, which would indicate a lot more than 3 cups per day total)
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
What's that whooshing sound?
(Ok, I'll explain it... drinking lots of Coke every day does increase cholesterol and lead to obesity and such... and increasing your chances of dying early before Alzheimer's kicks in. So yes, the odds of dying from Alzheimer's go down, because you're much more likely do die earlier from something else.)
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
Dew knot truss yore spill checker!
Free Martian Whores!
God yes, I remember that stuff. My Mom had a huge bar of it in the freezer for baking and told me I wouldn't like it, and not to eat it. Ten year old me thought he was so smart to figure out that Mom was just pulling one over on him to keep all the chocolate for herself. After all, how the hell could they make chocolate that I wouldn't like? Then I snuck a big chunk of it and could only think it had been a trap the whole time.