
The Science Behind Coffee and Why it's Actually Good for Your Health - urlwolf
http://lifehacker.com/5986506/the-science-behind-coffee-and-why-its-actually-good-for-your-health
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Symmetry
Horrbily one-sided. Wikipedia's article has both ways coffee is good and is
bad for you.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_coffee>

The important thing is that the dosage makes the the medicine of poison, and
that while drinking two or three cups a day may be better for your health than
not drinking coffee, drinking ten cups a day is bad for you.

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carbocation
Ignoring the specific number of cups for a moment, I like your discussion of
dosage making something medicine or poison.

In medicine we say that drugs have a "therapeutic index". That is, there is
some window in which the medication is more helpful than harmful. On the low
side, there is just no effect. On the high side, toxicities dominate.

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qu4z-2
Makes me wonder if there's anything with the opposite progression:

No effect -> harmful -> helpful

I'd guess not, but I'm curious as to why.

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MDS100
Overload /limitations to adaptation.

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josscrowcroft
All rings true to me both from my intuition and personal experience,
HOWEVER... They only briefly mention not to put sugar in your coffee. I think
this is a gross understatement, when all I see everywhere is people walking
around with bucket-sized cups of cream and syrup (plus a little espresso).

If anything, our consumption of coffee may have spurred the diabetes epidemic
by encouraging people to indulge their cream and sugar cravings all day long,
in a socially-encouraged and -reinforced way...

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superflit
Use honey instead of sugar or syrup it is very good.

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superflit
@drakim Yes IT is waaaayy better... (of course keep sane proportions) you can
check several papers at pubmed. one here [1] [1] =
<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21310307>

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mertd
Quoting the conclusion of the linked abstract: "These results suggest that in
comparison with sucrose, honey may reduce weight gain and adiposity,
_presumably due to lower food intake_ ,"

It seems like the rats on honey diet just ate less. I don't think this
transfers to the honey as sweetener use case, where you'd use about the same
amount of sugar compounds to reach desired sweetness level of the beverage.

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11001
Cool, let's just ignore the science of "coffee is bad for you" folks.
Everything has to be so fucking simple now - it's either good for you or it's
bad for you. Screw the other interacting variables.

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gz5
We each have 20k different genes and infinite combinations of genetics,
environment, behavior etc.

But the good news is everything is binary - it is all either good or bad - for
all of us.

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RougeFemme
Interesting article and I do enjoy my one cup of coffee (with Splenda™, brown
sugar and milk) per weekday _but_ . . .according to the article: __“Drinking
coffee is associated with a drastically reduced risk of type II diabetes” and
__“Coffee is associated with a much lower risk of dementia and the
neurodegenerative disorders Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.” and __“Coffee
consumption has been associated with a lower risk of death in prospective
epidemiological studies, especially in type II diabetics.”

Being “associated with” is pretty meaningless; it’s _not_ the same as being
statistically correlated with. The article also states “In fact, coffee is the
biggest source of antioxidants in the western diet, outranking both fruits and
vegetables combined”. I view that more as an indictment against the western
diet, not an endorsement of coffee as a source of antioxidants.

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Apocryphon
Yes, but how does it compare with tea?

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AznHisoka
Every time I drink coffee, I get mini-seizures. It's like my brain becomes TOO
over-active, and causes it to work faster/harder than it is capable of. I stay
away from coffee all the time as a result.

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carbocation
What does the term "mini-seizure" mean?

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AUmrysh
I'm guessing they mean muscle spasms and/or irregular heartbeat. I once drank
an entire pot of coffee when I was younger and had irregular heartbeat for
about half a day from it, I was wide awake though.

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mattlong
A lot of bold claims here. It's unfortunate that the article focuses solely on
the potential benefits of caffeine/coffe but glosses over the possibility of
there being any risks associated with them. That being said, I applaud the
author for providing references for all the claims he makes!

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superflit
Enough said! Now I am doing my MONSTER ITALIAN Espresso!

