Go easy on the coffee. You'll discover it has caused you acid reflux, long after you can do anything about it.
Also: sugar masks the flavor. Good coffee tastes best with just cream.
Drinking 3-4 Cups of Coffee Is “More Likely to Benefit Health Than to Harm It”
101–110 of 159 posts
Re: Drinking 3-4 Cups of Coffee Is “More Likely to Benefit Health Than to Harm It”
#102In about 100 years, people will realize that this kind of research doesn't actually work. Here's the problem: the human body is an immensely complex system, with millions of factors influencing its status and well-being. Untangling these factors correctly and producing an accurate and sophisticated statistical theory of the body would require a comparably large number of parameters - on the order of millions or more.…
Yep. The epitome of this is the infamous Finnish researcher who conducts ostensibly reasonable statistical analysis in order to prove his desired contrarian conclusion that it's beneficial to drink up to six pints of regular strength beer every day, and harmful to have days off drinking...
Even if a model actually succeeds in properly balancing the controls so that as well as controlling for basic demographics it also ensures its non coffee drinkers don't drink a commensurately larger portion of other caffeinated drinks or unhealthy alternative drinks or substitute for the caffeine hit with stronger drugs, and don't have a health reason for cutting caffeine or a cultural/social reason linked to other behaviours or diets, you've then got the problem that people with different genes and physical health likely metabolise coffee in very different ways, and to recommend more or less coffee to a particular individual, you've probably got to untangle all that too...
Re: Drinking 3-4 Cups of Coffee Is “More Likely to Benefit Health Than to Harm It”
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Circumcision is practiced by billions, yet there is no health benefits at all.
That's not true at all. Circumcision is linked to lower rates of penile cancer, lower rates of STD infection (probably why cancer rates are lower) particularly HIV and lower rates of bladder infections. In fact it was recommended that circumcision be standard practice in areas of Africa with high HIV rates.
Do you really think mutilating people’s genitalia is a reasonable intervention to lower STD rates?
It’s my opinion that circumcision acceptance is based on a cultural/ideological blind spot.
Re: Drinking 3-4 Cups of Coffee Is “More Likely to Benefit Health Than to Harm It”
#104So the article touched on this briefly but I think it's a point worth exploring: a big problem with many sources of caffeine is also that sugar confuses the issue. Many people have an excessive amount of sugar with their coffee (personally I find coffee revolting and 4+ sugars is the only way I could cope if I were forced to drink it). Other caffeinated drinks (eg sodas) are either sweetened (sugar or HFCS or have ar…
> Anyway I think it's impossible to talk about caffeine consumption without also considering sugar consumption because they really do go hand in hand. Not for everyone - there are people who drink coffee black with no sugar (especially espresso drinkers).
Coffee is not supposed to be sweet or iced for that matter. The only proper way to drink coffee is either black or with a little milk. :)
Re: Drinking 3-4 Cups of Coffee Is “More Likely to Benefit Health Than to Harm It”
#105I'm going to go out on a limb here and state a theory I've been considering for a while that could explain these coffee health benefit results... The liquids I and everyone else consumes can be placed in two classes: pure water and everything else. When I'm not drinking pure water, my drink of choice is usually coffee, of which I drink about 3 cups a day. Now let's think of the alternative non water drinks out there.…
Here's another theory. Coffee makes you move more. Moving is healthy. Think of how coffee gets people off their desks to get it and also because of the caffeine and the need to urinate after. Its unlike other drinks as people don't carry it in bottles, it requires more movement. Maybe the sedentary lifestyle is what's killing people.
I'd counter that. Coffee makes me sit down and intently focus unmoved; time speeds by.
Re: Drinking 3-4 Cups of Coffee Is “More Likely to Benefit Health Than to Harm It”
#106In about 100 years, people will realize that this kind of research doesn't actually work. Here's the problem: the human body is an immensely complex system, with millions of factors influencing its status and well-being. Untangling these factors correctly and producing an accurate and sophisticated statistical theory of the body would require a comparably large number of parameters - on the order of millions or more.…
I've never understood this phenomena myself. Those who do this kind of research on a daily basis must have been rather smart to get their job. Surely, they must be intelligent enough to realize that what they do does not really add up to much?
Re: Drinking 3-4 Cups of Coffee Is “More Likely to Benefit Health Than to Harm It”
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. I’m a slow caffeine metabolizer and had to give up caffeine.
How do you determine you are a slow metabolizer of caffeine?
An educated guess: you get stronger negative reactions to caffeine: anxiety/panic, aggression, insomnia, heart racing and/or palpitations, sweats, tremors/muscle spasms, dehydration.
That said, I don't think it's as genetically hard-coded as the the root comment suggested.
I've been through episodes (coinciding with when I was having debilitating symptoms of chronic fatigue and depression), when I experienced these symptoms (sometimes very severely) when consuming caffeine. As I've become more physically energized and mentally well, my tolerance for caffeine has vastly improved.
Re: Drinking 3-4 Cups of Coffee Is “More Likely to Benefit Health Than to Harm It”
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. I’m a slow caffeine metabolizer and had to give up caffeine.
How do you determine you are a slow metabolizer of caffeine?
Anecdotal: If you aren't able to fall asleep as easily 6 hours after a cup of coffee vs 10 hours you might be a slow metabolizer.
Strangely enough, if you find yourself in this situation of having drank coffee too late in the day nicotine has actually been proven to speed up the metabolization of caffeine: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3365914
Re: Drinking 3-4 Cups of Coffee Is “More Likely to Benefit Health Than to Harm It”
#109Observation: Coffee studies often report (in headlines and abstract and body) consumption in terms of cups . At best, this refers to a standardized 250 ml or 8 oz measuring cup (unfortunately, still rarely what "a cup of coffee" generally means to those who read these headlines and adjust behaviour as a result). At worst, the term is used to allow for ambiguity and variance expected in self-reporting. I recognize the…
Ahh, now here comes the fun part. There is no standard.
250ml is 8.5 ounces. Some places in Europe standardized on this.
A cup of anything else is 8 ounces.
A "cup of coffee" (the actual unit) is 6 ounces, and this is the standard everywhere where 250ml isn't, and we're not in Japan; but even though the US follows the 6 ounce standard, the USDA considers a cup 8 ounces on their nutrition table.
Japan has standardized on 200ml (or about 6.7 oz).
What SHOULD be measured is not liquid volume, but bean weight (measured in grams; even Ameicans measure it in grams when they're the type to weigh it instead of just throwing ambiguously heaped tablespoons in); and then shifted according to that blend's particular caffeine content (outside of specialty products with high-caffeine bean variants, caffeine content can vary about +/- 50% depending on the origin of the beans (roasting does not effect caffeine content meaningfully, although the myth lives on)).
Re: Drinking 3-4 Cups of Coffee Is “More Likely to Benefit Health Than to Harm It”
#110I think this kind of information is funded by the caffeine industry. This is pure insanity. It took me a month to quick coffee (IT professional here) and to stop hating my life. Another 5 months to finally get completely over it where I didn't feel like I was dragging every day. Now, I am free from coffee addiction and happy as I have ever been. No way in hell is that stuff good for you. Read Caffeine Blues, it will…
Yeah, what I find weird is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coffee_chemicals More than a thousand chemical compounds in coffee, area of active research. Does this imply that we don't know much about coffee yet? And more anecdotally, what I find weird is that when I switch from coffee drinking to tea and soft drinks, there seems to be no amount of caffeine intake that make the withdrawal symptoms go away. F…
Its also worth considering the strength of the coffee may be more than anticipated. For instance, a 20oz cup of Starbucks coffee has _more than double_ the caffeine found in 20oz of red bull. It always gives me a laugh when the "5 hour energy" commercials advertise "only as much caffeine as a cup of the leading premium brand of coffee" -- aka Starbucks. A 5 hour energy _also_ has more caffeine than a red bull. I always bring this up in these conversations because it was all such a surprise to me.