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Is Coffee the Solution to Everything from Cancer to
Female Sex Drive?
Latest study says coffee protects women at high risk
of breast cancer
Jan. 18, 2006 Women at high risk of breast cancer
before reaching age 70 reduced this pending danger by 80 percent by
drinking six or more cups of coffee a day, says a new study just one
of several recent reports claiming health benefits of coffee. Health
conscious senior citizens, always seeking the latest miracle drug, may
find they have been taking it all along.
(All
the coffee news is not good - see report below this story.)
The health benefits of coffee just keep pouring in.
Besides the new cancer study linking higher coffee consumption to lower
percentage of women who develop breast cancer, recent studies have
suggested that -
● those who drink more than three cups of coffee
daily are less likely to develop high blood pressure,
● coffee drinkers are less likely to develop
liver cancer,
● coffee is the number one source of healthy
antioxidants in the American diet,
● coffee reduces development of type 2 diabetes,
● coffee prevents Parkinson's disease,
● coffee contributes to better short-term memory
and
● last but not least, that coffee may increase
sex drive in women.
The latest coffee study on breast cancer was
conducted by Steven Narod of the University of Toronto. The study,
published in the International Journal of Cancer in January, studied
women with a very specific gene mutation known as BRCA1.
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Coffee is Number One Source of Antioxidants in
American Diet
Seniors Citizens Told Antioxidants Good for
Preventing Almost Anything
Aug.
28, 2005 Senior citizens are pounded with information about the
benefits of antioxidants. There is research that says they are good for
preventing about everything from Alzheimers to cancer, to heart disease,
and even dementia in old dogs. The facts in a paper presented this
morning, however, may surprise most people coffee is by far the number
one source of antioxidants in the American diet.
Read
more...
Read more on
Nutrition, Vitamins, Supplements |
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Those women have an 80 percent risk of developing
breast cancer before their 70th birthday. But according to Narod, those
involved in his study, "... who drank six or more cups of coffee a day
on average had about a 75 percent reduction in the risk of developing
breast cancer."
Getting bigger headlines, however, is a recent
study of sexual behavior in rats suggests that coffee serves as the
equivalent of female Viagra.
In the study, female rats that got their first shot
of caffeine before mating were quicker than uncaffeinated females to
scurry back to a male rat after sex.
The caffeinated females weren't just looking for
company. "It looks as if they wanted to have sex again," researcher Fay
Guarraci, PhD, told WebMD. (Read
full report)
That study was tentative at best, and looked only
at rats which were not habitual coffee drinkers. So women who consume
coffee rarely may find coffee to be a sexual stimulant.
But other health studies link coffee consumption to
solid evidence that high levels of antioxidants in coffee carry health
benefits and may reduce the risk of several cancers. A separate cancer
study shows coffee drinkers are less likely to develop cancer of the
liver as consumption levels increase.
A paper presented last year at the Radiological
Society of North America (RSNA) in Chicago linked coffee drinking with
better short-term memory. Florian Koppelstatter, M.D., Ph.D., said, "We
were able to show that caffeine modulates a higher brain function
through its effects on distinct areas of the brain." Koppelstatter is a
radiology fellow at the Medical University-Innsbruck in Austria.
About
information source:
Some of
the information in this story was provided by Tastes of The World coffee
company. The company focuses on specialty gourmet coffee not readily
available in the US. Rare gourmet coffee is their business, so they make
shopping with them risk-free: "If you are happy, tell a friend; if you
are not, tell us."
Health
benefits of gourmet coffees can be discussed at the Coffee Talk Forum:
http://www.tastesoftheworld.net/talk/. Tastes of The World was
recently interviewed by Radio New Zealand and profiled in a Reuters
"News of the Weird" on their gourmet coffee called Kopi Luwak, because
it passes through the digestive tract of the cat-like Palm Civet, and is
the most expensive coffee in the world. Exotic Kopi Luwak coffee, from
Indonesia, sells through the Tastes of The World web site at $175 per
pound.
Cup of Not Good News
Coffee Limits Blood Flow to Heart During Exercise
Jan. 18, 2006 - All the coffee news is not good
news, however, as a study published yesterday says two cups of coffee
reduces the body's ability to boost blood flow to the heart muscle in
response to exercise.
"Whenever we do a physical exercise, myocardial
blood flow has to increase in order to match the increased need of
oxygen. We found that caffeine may adversely affect this mechanism. It
partly blunts the needed increase in flow," said Philipp A. Kaufmann,
M.D., F.A.C.C., from the University Hospital Zurich and Center for
Integrative Human Physiology CIHP in Zurich,
The researchers, including lead author Mehdi Namdar,
M.D., F.A.C.C., studied only 18 young, healthy people who were regular
coffee drinkers. The participants did not drink any coffee for 36 hours
prior to the study testing.
In one part of the study, PET scans that showed
blood flow in the hearts of 10 participants were performed before and
immediately after they rode a stationary exercise bicycle.
In the second part of the study, the same type of
myocardial blood-flow measurements were done in 8 participants who were
in a chamber simulating the thin air at about 15,000 feet (4,500 meters)
altitude. The high-altitude test was designed to mimic the way coronary
artery disease deprives the heart muscle of sufficient oxygen. In both
groups, the testing procedure was repeated 50 minutes after each
participant swallowed a tablet containing 200 milligrams of caffeine,
the equivalent of two cups of coffee.
The caffeine dose did not affect blood flow within
the heart muscle while the participants were at rest. However, the blood
flow measurements taken immediately after exercise were significantly
lower after the participants had taken caffeine tablets. The effect was
pronounced in the group in the high-altitude chamber.
Blood flow normally increases in response to
exercise, and the results indicate that caffeine reduces the body's
ability to boost blood flow to the muscle of the heart on demand.
Dr. Kaufmann said that caffeine may block certain
receptors in the walls of blood vessels, interfering with the normal
process by which adenosine signals blood vessels to dilate in response
to the demands of physical activity.
"Although these findings seem not to have a
clinical importance in healthy volunteers, they may raise safety
questions in patients with reduced coronary flow reserve, as seen in
coronary artery disease, particularly before physical exercise and at
high-altitude exposure," the researchers wrote.
Although caffeine is a stimulant, these results
also indicate that coffee may not necessarily boost athletic
performance.
Although this study included only 18 participants,
the researchers said that the differences they saw were large enough for
them to be confident that the effect of caffeine on heart muscle blood
flow is real.
Although the participants were all healthy, Dr.
Kaufmann said that the results raise concerns about possible effects of
caffeine in people with heart disease.
The researchers noted that other studies of coffee
and heart disease have produced mixed results.
The study is in the Jan. 17, 2006, issue of the
Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Dr. Schindler said that further studies will be
needed to answer the important questions raised by this study.
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