All I care about is, I like it.

Sipping my morning brew right now, with the dog.

Scotty


"Thom Stewart" wrote in message
...
Max & CM, maybe Scot;

While finishing off the last cup of the 2nd pot of Coffee
I thougth of
"Yuz Guys"
----------------------------------------
Coffee:
Drink more.
Effects:
As I write this, I am savoring an especially enjoyable
cup of coffee,
made so by the knowledge that sipping it may decrease my
risk of
developing adult-onset diabetes (though, sadly, the slab
of gooseberry
pie I ate a few minutes earlier almost certainly
neutralized the
beneficial effect). Coffee is one of the most widely
consumed beverages
in the world. We like its taste and, even more, its
pharmacological
effects, including an increased sense of alertness and
ability to
counteract sleepiness. Medically, coffee's most important
active
ingredient, caffeine, has only a few uses: It helps some
headache
sufferers, and it's sometimes administered to infants
(especially
premature ones) who need to be pharmacologically
"reminded" to keep
breathing. Other effects of caffeine are not so benign. It
acts on the
kidneys as a diuretic and can cause jitteriness, rapid
heart rate, and
loose stools. Extremely large doses can cause seizures
and--extremely
rarely--death.
Antioxidants: Coffee ought to be beneficial by virtue of
its high
content of antioxidants, natural chemicals that bind and
neutralize a
group of unstable materials in body cells that, among
other things,
damage DNA, causing the effects of aging and the cellular
changes that
lead to cancer. Coffee contains more of these antioxidants
than green
tea and red wine. Sadly, it's been hard to absolutely
demonstrate the
value of the antioxidant properties of these beverages,
though most of
us doctors believe in them anyway.
Diabetes: The association between coffee-drinking and
reduced risk of
adult-onset diabetes, on the other hand, has now been
well-established
by a number of studies that followed many, many patients
in a wide
variety of geographical locations. Often, in big
epidemiological
studies, one can't tell whether the observed association
is the result
of causation--drinking coffee protects against
diabetes--or of two
loosely related phenomena. Imagine, for example, that
people with
heavier, diabetes-prone bodies might find undesirable a
beverage that's
a stimulant and mildly diuretic. Still, the coffee studies
add up: If
many studies produce similar findings after drawing from
diverse
populations and taking care to rule out other,
coincidental, factors as
causes, it becomes increasingly likely that we are dealing
with
causation, not mere association. In addition, a
dose-response curve--the
more coffee drunk, the less diabetes risk--adds a lot to
the causation
argument.
New findings: That is what we have for coffee-drinking and
diabetes
risk. I counted more than seven good studies reporting
that reduced
diabetes is associated with coffee-drinking. The most
recent, a study by
Mark Pereira, Emily Parker, and Aaron Folsom of the
University of
Minnesota, followed more than 28,000 post-menopausal women
over 11
years. The research team found an almost linear decrease
in the risk of
developing diabetes based on how much coffee their
subjects drank on
average. Women who drank six or more cups a day showed the
most benefit.
An earlier study conducted in Finland, which has the
highest per-capita
consumption of coffee in the world, found the effect
especially
beneficial for the 16 percent of the study population who
drank 10 or
more cups a day. Interestingly, the new study showed that
the beneficial
effect could not have been due to caffeine, magnesium, or
phytic
acid--each of which previously had been suspected of
playing a role.
Actually, decaffeinated coffee does more to decrease the
risk of
diabetes than the high-octane version. And the Finland
study found that
filtered coffee was more effective than boiled.
So, though we still have no idea of what in coffee
protects against
developing diabetes, the drink looks like that rarity:
something you
desire that might be good for you.




http://community.webtv.net/tassail/ThomPage