A recently study finds that coffee, or rather the caffeine from one cup of coffee a day, can reduce a person’s risk of dementia. Seems it helps strengthen the barrier between the brain and the bloodstream. Do we need yet another reason to enjoy coffee? Of course not. But this does indicate that caffeinated coffee may be healthier than decaf. Read more at the BBC website.
Add comment April 3rd, 2008
Chemists have discovered that most of the bitterness found in coffee is due to antioxidants formed in the roasting process (only about fifteen percent is due to caffeine), though the brewing process also affects the amount of bitterness in the final cup. You can read more at livescience.com.
Add comment August 23rd, 2007
Coffee seems to do more good than harm, when drank in moderation of course. One study found that coffee consumption can result in a 41 percent reduction in the risk for cancer. Another study found that coffee, or rather caffeine, can great reduce your risk of skin cancer. Read more at the links above. (via Digg)
Add comment August 2nd, 2007
Have you ever heard of the medical condition known as “blepharospasm”? Neither have I. For many people, usually between 50 and 70 years old, it’s a life-altering affliction characterized by an uncontrollable twitching of the eyelid. In extreme cases, their eyelids may be clamped shut, rendering them effectively blind. Researchers in Italy found that drinking one or two cups of coffee a day seemed to reduce the risk of this condition (as reported in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry). From the article, it appears that coffee drinking won’t help treat an existing condition, but rather can help prevent it from forming.
On a more humorous side, those Italians take their coffee drinking so seriously that researchers found that “the low frequency of decaffeinated coffee intake in Italy prevented us from examining the effects of caffeine on blepharospasm” and thus they’re not certain whether it’s the caffeine that provides the benefit, or some other ingredient in coffee.
You can read the full story over at the BBC News website.
Add comment June 20th, 2007
According to the medical journal Gastroenterology, drinking coffee appears to lower your risk of developing liver cancer. The study (actually, eleven separate studies) involved 239,146 people, 2,260 of who had liver cancer. For every two cups of coffee drank per day, a forty three percent reduced risk of liver cancer was observed. Read more here.
Add comment June 7th, 2007
Well, the stories and studies keep rolling in, with one thing clear - drinking coffee, in moderation, can decrease many health risks. Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, kidney stones, gallstones, depression, suicide, type 2 diabetes, etc. One interesting thing to note is that the apparent decreased risk of type 2 diabetes is the same for those who drink decaffeinated as caffeinated. There’s a possible downside though, a potentially increased risk of leukemia and stomach cancer. You can read more about this over at Physorg (yeah, I know, not the usual sort of article for that website!).
Add comment April 30th, 2007
An abstract from the International Journal of Dermatology:
Background Androgenetic alopecia (AGA) is a common problem in men of all ages, affecting approximately 50% at 50 years of age. The underlying cause is an androgen-dependent miniaturization of genetically predetermined hair follicles. Here, the hair organ culture model was used to investigate the effects of testosterone and caffeine; the latter being a promising candidate for hair growth stimulation.
Methods Hair follicles from 14 biopsies, taken from the vertex areas from male AGA patients, were cultivated for 120–192 h in vitro with normal William’s E medium (control) or William’s E medium containing different concentrations of testosterone and/or caffeine. Hair shaft elongation was measured daily and at the end of cultivation, cryosections of follicles were stained with Ki-67 to evaluate the degree and localization of keratinocyte proliferation.
Results Significant growth suppression was found in hair follicles treated with 5 µg/ml testosterone. This was counteracted by caffeine in concentrations of 0.001% and 0.005%. Moreover, caffeine alone led to a significant stimulation of hair follicle growth. These results were confirmed immunohistochemically by Ki-67 staining.
Conclusions Androgen-dependent growth inhibition of ex vivo hair follicles from patients suffering from AGA was present in the human hair organ culture model, a constellation which may serve for future studies to screen new substances against androgen-dependent hair loss. Caffeine was identified as a stimulator of human hair growth in vitro; a fact which may have important clinical impact in the management of AGA.
Add comment April 26th, 2007
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