Max & CM, maybe Scot;

While finishing off the last cup of the 2nd pot of Coffee I thougth of
"Yuz Guys"
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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.




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