Drink Up -- Coffee is Good for You
From time to time news stories float around about how coffee is good for you, coffee is bad for you, etc. For the coffee fanatics among us, let’s focus today on all the “good for you” stories.
First, if you’re interested in where to get your caffeine fix and background info on caffeine and its concentration from various sources:
Brewed coffee (7 oz) 115-175 mg
Coca-Cola Classic (12 oz) 34 mg
Mountain Dew (12 oz) 54.5 mg
NoDoz, regular strength (1 tablet) 100 mg
Excedrin (1 tablet) 65 mg
(Of course, the following news stories, while encouraging to the caffeine-addicted, are all preliminary, so take it all with… a cup of coffee).
Individuals who drink more coffee (regular or decaffeinated) or tea appear to have a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
Data presented at the Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research Conference showed coffee consumption was associated with a reduced risk of advanced prostate cancer.
When aged mice bred to develop symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease began drinking caffeine before the cognitive impairments set in, they had fewer plaques and did better on memory tasks. When they began drinking caffeine after their cognitive abilities had began to decline, their memory improved to about the performance of normal mice.
Coffee can actually lead to good breath.
Caffeine consumption seems to reduce pain from physical exercise.
A study found that drinking coffee might reduce the risk of stroke.
Using mice that develop a multiple sclerosis-like condition, scientists found that drinking caffeine protected mice from developing the condition.
A study found a correlation between higher coffee consumption and lower liver cancer risk.
Caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee consumption was associated with a somewhat smaller rate of death from heart disease.
Of course, there are some possible negatives, such as the report that people who ingest a lot of caffeine are more likely to report experiencing hallucinations.
And then there’s this situation:
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I just listen to what my body tells me, and on the very rare occasions when I do have coffee, I feel sick in my stomach & occasionally have a headache with some brands.
So, no, coffee isn't good for me
Using 1940s medical technology , the medical research community was able to conclusively identify cigarettes as harmful quite quickly.
Three generations later of week-in/week-out conflicting studies on coffee, and we're no where further than where we started. Instead of giving every crackpot study press release the reverence of gospel -like truth, isn't it time we question why so much research for so many years has been so inclusive -- and why we seem to continue to keep doing that?
If you or I were asked to do something as simple as answer a question and it took us 70 years and billions of dollars and we still couldn't answer it, we'd be fired in a heartbeat. Why? Because that's called incompetence. And if it's not outright incompetence and waste, you next have to suspect conspiracy.
People love reading these irrelevant medical studies on the effects of coffee. It sells newspapers . It gets grant proposals for researchers funded. We fuel the continued waste with articles like this one.
At what point do we call "b.s." here?