Naked Science Forum
General Science => General Science => Topic started by: Herman Melville on 14/07/2009 12:45:55
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I've read very different things about coffee being good and/or bad for us. Some say it makes you more intelligent. Recently it was claimed that it could reverse Alzheimer's.
I feel it makes me happier, but I never drink instant coffee and restrict myself to just two or three real coffees per week.
Is it good and/or bad for you? If so, in what quantities.
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It may reverse Alzheimer's but I can't remember to drink any, these days, so I may be too late.
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It had good points and bad points, and is probably best consumed in moderation, which is the usual advice for foods/beverages. Most advice I've seen is to limit intake to 5 "cups" a day.
The good:
Studies have shown it may help protect against Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes and heart disease.
It may help with short-term memory and concentration.
It contains plenty of antioxidants and might help protect against cancer.
The bad:
It contains plenty of carcinogenic compounds (though no one's found that it causes cancer yet).
It can cause anxiety, the jitters, and can cause short-term concentration problems.
You can develop a dependence to it.
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You missed out one major bad one, as an ex night shift worker I know it too well:
There is a tendency to cause minor tremor of the hands.
If you have ever tried to solder SMD`s after 2 am after 4 real perked cups of cofee it is almost impossible unless you put a rubber band around your wrist and clamp it in the desk vice to damp the hand shakes.
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I don't know why people drink that stuff.
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I just remembered bad joke from my science teacher, he said that a coffee is someone who coughs
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I like coffee.. yum. but I usually have one mocha cappuccino on the weekend mornings.. then if I can one during week days but I am not strung out on coffee or addicted I can live with it or without!
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OH AND IT DOES NOTHING FOR ME AT ALL IN THE WAY OF MAKING ME HYPER.. NOHING DOES THAT I KNOW OF BUT THE WIND!
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Coffee is a slow poison- and many people are still being poisoned by it when they are into the 80s or 90s after a lifetime of drinking it!
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Coffee is a slow poison- and many people are still being poisoned by it when they are into the 80s or 90s after a lifetime of drinking it!
In what way? Curious to hear more about this.
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It's ever so slow. You'll never live past 130 if you keep drinking coffee. [;)]
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Although, by no means a scientific study, I have found that coffee helps me to avoid having migraine headaches. It would seem that a trigger factor for me is withdrawl from cafeine. I cannot envisage a life wholly without cafeine and I dislike tea, so to avoid losing hours to pain, I drink a couple of cups of coffee a day. The best coffee is made in Cona coffee makers, which has the added bonus of resembling a chemistry experiment...
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Is it true that coffee lowers the immunity? If so, should we give it up during flu pandemics?
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I've never heard that coffee lowers immunity to disease directly. If you drink too much caffeine, you could have trouble sleeping, and lack of sleep would lower your immunity.
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Really strong coffee gives me a bad tummy but I luff Mochas sooo much. I have had to go for one shots these days. I do like the cafe culture. It is good for the soul to sit and watch the world go by for a bit.
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Really strong coffee gives me a bad tummy but I luff Mochas sooo much. I have had to go for one shots these days. I do like the cafe culture. It is good for the soul to sit and watch the world go by for a bit.
Ditto on all counts!
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It had good points and bad points, and is probably best consumed in moderation, which is the usual advice for foods/beverages. Most advice I've seen is to limit intake to 5 "cups" a day.
The good:
Studies have shown it may help protect against Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes and heart disease.
It may help with short-term memory and concentration.
It contains plenty of antioxidants and might help protect against cancer.
The bad:
It contains plenty of carcinogenic compounds (though no one's found that it causes cancer yet).
It can cause anxiety, the jitters, and can cause short-term concentration problems.
You can develop a dependence to it.
Yes, moderation is the key here. I drink only 3 cups per day, or a max of four. I alternate between instant and real coffee, and never sensed any major difference between them. I have been drinking coffee for years. I also agree on the addiction point you made: if I don't drink coffee for a day or two then I suffer from strange, irritating headaches. Then once I resume coffee drinking the headache goes away! :P
I have heard many rumors like coffee damages your earlobe, that it causes cancer and all that, and I guess they are just that-rumors. The only side effects of coffee I have found are: addiction, anxiety, feeling jittery and dehydration!
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Coffee is a stimulant and a diuretic! Thats why one gets so fidgetty and anxious and jittery...then you wee like crazy and get dehydrated.. I hear the caffeine withdrawal headaches can be real buggers!
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It had good points and bad points, and is probably best consumed in moderation, which is the usual advice for foods/beverages. Most advice I've seen is to limit intake to 5 "cups" a day.
The good:
Studies have shown it may help protect against Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes and heart disease.
It may help with short-term memory and concentration.
It contains plenty of antioxidants and might help protect against cancer.
The bad:
It contains plenty of carcinogenic compounds (though no one's found that it causes cancer yet).
It can cause anxiety, the jitters, and can cause short-term concentration problems.
You can develop a dependence to it.
Yes, moderation is the key here. I drink only 3 cups per day, or a max of four. I alternate between instant and real coffee, and never sensed any major difference between them. I have been drinking coffee for years. I also agree on the addiction point you made: if I don't drink coffee for a day or two then I suffer from strange, irritating headaches. Then once I resume coffee drinking the headache goes away! :P
I have heard many rumors like coffee damages your earlobe, that it causes cancer and all that, and I guess they are just that-rumors. The only side effects of coffee I have found are: addiction, anxiety, feeling jittery and dehydration!
I would say that withdrawal headaches are a sure sign you are having too much. I think one a day is the ideal balance.
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Some more tidbits:
One thing to watch out for is "size creep." A cup of coffee is technically 6 oz. Very few people probably drink it that way. Most coffee shops in the US sell an 8 or 12 oz size as their smallest, so drinking a couple of Starbucks "cups" of coffee could get you 3-4 actually drinks worth.
Another interesting tidbit is that caffeine may not actually be a diuretic: http://www.medicinenet.com/caffeine/page3.htm . It might just be that people drink it for a pick-me-up, rather than to quench thirst, so it's added on top of the usual allotment of fluids.
Finally, the LD50 in rats (the dose lethal to 50% of them) is 192 mg caffeine/kg body weight. There's roughly 150 mg caffeine in a 6 oz cup, so that means don't drink more cups of coffee than your mass in kg! I doubt your stomach would hold down that much coffee though.