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Coffee Drinkers Are More Likely To Live Longer. Decaf May Do The Trick, Too (npr.org)
Coffee is far from a vice. There's now lots of evidence pointing to its health benefits, including a possible longevity boost for those of us with a daily coffee habit. From a report: The latest findings come from a study published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine that included about a half-million people in England, Scotland and Wales. "We found that people who drank two to three cups per day had about a 12 percent lower risk of death compared to non-coffee drinkers" during the decade-long study, says Erikka Loftfield, a research fellow at the National Cancer Institute. Participants ranged in age from 38 to 73. The association held up among drinkers of decaffeinated coffee, too. In the U.S., there are similar findings linking higher consumption of coffee to a lower risk of early death in African-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Latinos and white adults, both men and women. A daily coffee habit is also linked to a decreased risk of stroke and Type 2 diabetes.
The result showing decaf might have a similar effect is possibly the most interesting point in the study. It suggests that the effect is from something other than caffeine, which would mean there's more interesting chemicals in coffee.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
There's increasing evidence that fake sugar is worse for you than real sugar. My understanding is that the fake sugar affects the sugar receptors in the rest of your body the same way it does the ones in your tongue, which makes it prone to induce type II diabetes- almost exactly the opposite effect from what you want.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
There's three or four major "fake sugars" though, so I wouldn't make a generalisation just yet. Maybe one kind only affects the sugar receptors in your tongue but not the sugar receptors in the rest of your body, etc.
I can drink diet stuff with sucralose just fine, but anything with the others and I feel like crap afterwards.
Maybe different people react differently to the different fake sugars, too.
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I'm naturally an insomniac, although becoming less of one as I age. My kids now have the same problem, other people in my family have had the same problem. Insomnia runs in the family. When I was a teenager going through my early 30's I would live on a three day cycle. Night 1: no sleep and not feel tired the next day; night 2: 1 or 2 hours sleep max, but I do feel tired in the morning; night 3: sleep like a log- body reset.
It was an endless cycle of those three days. In my 30's I started drinking more coffee- and found I started sleeping more often- my 3 day cycle became a 2 day cycle... and then sleeping most nights; these days there is probably only on average one night a week I don't sleep at all. Usually when I don't sleep it's on a night I don't have coffee before I go to bed.
Mentioned it on the phone to my mother one evening and she said that she had the same reaction to coffee. She doesn't sleep unless she has her coffee. I think there is some genetic link there somehow. Caffeine effects some of us differently with the opposite reaction.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
you obviously did not read the study...the study did not look at other lifestyle indicators - it was meant to see across 500k individuals was caffeine life extending...they found out that coffee of any sort was life extending. other lifestyle changes also extend life and that has already been proven.
I read what I could, and from what I read they made no attempts to normalize against those other known lifestyle indicators. They may have, as it would be very important to drawing a conclusion about causation, but I didn't see it stated. If you have a proven lifestyle indicator that correlates with coffee drinking, than it might not be the coffee that extends life.
If they grouped people according to lifestyle, and saw the caffeine correlation within those groups instead of across them, then you have a more solid basis.
here's the complete results: Coffee drinkers were more likely male, white, drinkers of alcohol and former smokers. Those drinking four cups or more a day, continued to smoke and were more likely to drink instant coffee. (Starbucks take note!) Those drinking less were more likely to be “in excellent health,” older and with a university degree. Concerning all-cause mortality, coffee drinking, in a dose-dependent way was protective, compared to non-coffee drinkers, reducing deaths by 14% in those drinking 8 cups a day. When limited to cancer and cardiovascular deaths, coffee drinking was protective although to a lesser degree. Ground coffee drinkers showed the most significant effect, followed by instant and decaffeinated. Individuals with the genetic “profile” representing faster caffeine metabolism drank more coffee Irrespective of the genetic “profile” coffee conferred a survival advantage. How quickly you metabolized, caffeine made no difference. The exact effect of caffeine by itself seems problematic since the same trends in reducing mortality, albeit to a lesser degree, was true for those who drank decaffeinated coffee. The study joins the growing unclear literature on the impact of coffee on our health. But it shows that our search for answers is shifting focus, from merely the amount of coffee ingested to the genetics underlying our true biologic exposure – after all, those with slower caffeine metabolisms have it hanging around for more extended periods of time. It also serves as an introduction to the term Mendelian randomization, that according to Google’s Ngram [2] appeared in about 1975, but whose use increased 63-fold by 2008. added: Mendelian randomization: "...a method for obtaining unbiased estimates of the effects of a putative causal variable without conducting a traditional randomised trial..." Conclusions and Relevance: Coffee drinking was inversely associated with mortality, including among those drinking 8 or more cups per day and those with genetic polymorphisms indicating slower or faster caffeine metabolism. These findings suggest the importance of noncaffeine constituents in the coffee-mortality association and provide further reassurance that coffee drinking can be a part of a healthy diet.
nothing to see here - move along