DIR Return Create A Forum - Home
---------------------------------------------------------
MS Speaks
HTML https://msspeaks.createaforum.com
---------------------------------------------------------
*****************************************************
DIR Return to: DIET AND NUTRITION
*****************************************************
#Post#: 852--------------------------------------------------
Ways in which caffeine is good for you
By: agate Date: July 5, 2015, 7:31 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
From Nutrition Action, June 29, 2015:
[quote]
Have another cup and relax; caffeine is good for you*
David Schardt
Caffeine is good for you
Most people rely on caffeine to stay alert. But researchers
suggest that it may do far more—lowering the risk of Parkinson’s
disease and gallstones, for example. Here’s what you may not
know about the times that caffeine is good for you.
* This information does not apply to women who are pregnant (or
trying to become pregnant) or to children. Nor does it apply to
caffeine powder or highly concentrated liquid caffeine, which
can be lethal.
1. Caffeine lowers the risk of Parkinson’s Disease
“There is fairly convincing evidence that people who drink
coffee or consume caffeine regularly have a lower risk of
developing Parkinson’s Disease,” says researcher Alberto
Ascherio of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.
An estimated 1.5 million Americans have Parkinson’s disease.
They experience trembling in the hands, arms, legs, jaw, and
face. Their limbs and trunk become stiff. They move slowly and
lose balance and coordination. As symptoms worsen, they may have
difficulty walking, talking, or performing other simple tasks.
Parkinson’s is caused by the loss of brain cells that produce
chemical messengers called dopamine. But it seems caffeine is
good for you in stemming that loss.
“When researchers exposed mice to a chemical that causes a loss
of dopaminergic neurons in a pattern similar to that observed in
Parkinson’s disease, those that had first been given caffeine
equivalent to moderate amounts of coffee in humans lost fewer
neurons than those not given caffeine,” explains Ascherio.
In a meta-analysis that pooled 13 studies, drinkers of regular
coffee – but not decaf – had a 30 percent lower risk of
Parkinson’s than non-drinkers.
And it doesn’t take much caffeine—just 100 to 200 milligrams a
day. “Even a modest amount – the equivalent of between one and
two cups of coffee per day—is associated with a lower risk,”
notes Ascherio.
2. Caffeine reduces gallstones
In the Nurses’ Health Study, which tracked nearly 81,000 women
for 20 years, and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study,
which tracked 46,000 men for 10 years, those who drank two to
three cups of regular coffee a day had about a 20 percent lower
risk of gallstones than non-drinkers.
“Tea, decaf coffee, and caffeinated soft drinks weren’t
protective, probably because they don’t contain enough of what’s
making the difference— caffeine,” says Michael Leitzmann,
formerly of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.
One theory: caffeine is good for you because it may stimulate
the gallbladder to contract, which helps empty it of
stone-forming cholesterol and bile pigments.
3. Caffeine improves alertness
Caffeine improves alertness and reaction time in people, whether
they’re habitual consumers of caffeine or not,” says Harris
Lieberman, a psychologist at the U.S. Army Research Institute of
Environmental Medicine in Natick, Massachusetts.
In the sleep-deprived, however, caffeine has a more striking
impact. “It improves almost everything you can measure,” says
Lieberman. “It makes you more alert, it seems like you can
perform complex tasks better, and your memory is better.”
Why?
“People who are falling asleep on the job can’t do much of
anything,” says Lieberman. “If you give them something that
wakes them up and makes them focus, they’re going to do better.”
4. Caffeine makes you happier
After consuming anywhere from 20 mg to 200 mg of caffeine,
“people report increased well-being, happiness, energy,
alertness, and sociability,” says caffeine expert Roland
Griffiths of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore.
That may be why three studies that tracked more than 200,000 men
and women for up to 20 years found that those who drank at least
two cups of regular coffee a day were about half as likely to
commit suicide as those who drank one cup or less a week.
5. Caffeine boosts endurance
Caffeine helps the body burn fat instead of carbohydrates, and
it blunts the perception of pain. Both can boost endurance.
For example, endurance runners who ran to exhaustion on a
treadmill lasted an average of 32 minutes without caffeine, but
made it to 42 minutes after drinking coffee with around 250 mg
of caffeine.
6. Caffeine is an analgesic
When you get a headache, the blood vessels in your brain dilate,
or become wider. Caffeine causes blood vessels to constrict,
which may explain why it can help relieve headache pain.
“It’s also a mild analgesic, or painkiller, and it has the
ability to increase the availability of other analgesics that
it’s combined with,” says Robert Shapiro, a headache expert at
the University of Vermont College of Medicine in Burlington.
7. Caffeine slows cognitive decline
Caffeine may protect your brain from cognitive decline.
“In our study of people who already had an increased risk of
cognitive decline because of cardiovascular risk factors,
consuming about 500 milligrams of caffeine a day was strongly
associated with memory preservation,” says Harvard’s Jae Hee
Kang.
“It seems to require high levels of caffeine—four or five cups
of coffee a day.”
The study found no lower risk among people who drank decaf or
cola or tea, possibly because they got less caffeine. Until a
trial tests caffeine against a placebo, though, it’s not clear
that it protects the brain. Even so, researchers have some
reason to expect that caffeine may help.
8. Caffeine may lower the risk of kidney stones
Researchers tracked nearly 218,000 nurses and health
professionals for roughly eight years. People who typically
consumed about 350 milligrams of caffeine a day had a 20 to 25
percent lower risk of kidney stones than those who consumed
little or no caffeine.
The researchers, however, couldn’t tell if coffee, rather than
caffeine, explained the lower risk. When they looked at people
who drank less than one cup of caffeinated coffee per day, their
caffeine from other sources was linked to a lower risk of kidney
stones in men, but not in women.
Roughly 6,000 participants provided 24-hour urine samples. Those
who consumed the most caffeine had lower concentrations of
calcium oxalate in their urine, which could be important since
most kidney stones are made of calcium oxalate.
Sources:
Ann. Neurol. 52: 276, 2002. Gastroenterology 123: 1823, 2002.
JAMA 281: 2106, 1999. Ann. Intern. Med. 144: 785, 2006. Arch.
Intern. Med. 156: 521, 1996. J. Appl. Physiol. 85: 883, 1998.
World J. Biol. Psychiatry 15: 377, 2014. J. Alzheimers Dis. 35:
413, 2013.
[/quote]
*****************************************************