Going to live forever, for real.

People who live on the Greek island of Ikaria are known to have remarkably high life expectancies, and researchers have been studying them carefully to learn why. Now a new report suggests that one reason may be the coffee they drink.

Going to live forever...

Haven't posted one of these in a while.

The National Institutes of Health study, published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, indicated that caffeinated and decaf coffee drinkers were less likely to die from heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, injuries and accidents, diabetes, and infections.

In an interview published this week in the Journal of Caffeine Research, Neal Freedman — with the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the NIH National Cancer Institute — said his study is among the most comprehensive to date of the health benefits of coffee and has significant implications for java junkies. Researchers tracked 500,000 U.S. men and women — ages 50 to 71, all members of the American Association of Retired Persons — for about 12 years. 

Not only did the results show a clear association between coffee and longevity, Freedman said, but they also indicated people who drank the most coffee tended to have greatest health benefits. 

I'm going to live forever: part CLVII in a continuing series

Having your coffee and enjoying it too

When smoking and many other factors known to influence health and longevity were taken into account, coffee drinkers in the study were found to be living somewhat longer than abstainers. Further, the more coffee consumed each day — up to a point, at least — the greater the benefit to longevity.

The observed benefit of coffee drinking was not enormous — a death rate among coffee drinkers that was 10 percent to 15 percent lower than among abstainers. But the findings are certainly reassuring, and given how many Americans drink coffee, the numbers of lives affected may be quite large.

...
Coffee drinkers who were relatively healthy when the study began were less likely than nondrinkers to die of heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, diabetes, infections, injuries and accidents.
...
The risk of death gradually dropped as the number of cups the participants drank increased to four or five. At six cups or more each day, there was a slight rise in death risk, compared with that at four or five cups. But the chances of death remained lower than among people who drank no coffee.
...

Even though coffee can cause a temporary rise in blood pressure, the new study, like those before it, found the risk of heart disease to be lower among otherwise healthy coffee drinkers. Other benefits suggested by recent studies include a reduced risk of Type 2 diabetes, liver disease andParkinson’s disease. Some research has found a reduced risk of depression, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease among coffee drinkers.

People who engage in strenuous physical activities can also benefit, but only if their coffee contains caffeine, which helps muscles use fatty acids for energy and blunts the effect of adenosine, extending the time before muscles fatigue. Post-exercise soreness is also reduced and recovery time shortened.

Going to live forever.

I especially appreciate how many of these studies find that the health benefits occur primarily among drinkers of 5-6 or more cups a day.

It's the apocalypse

Time to panic, hoard, and acquire shotguns.

It is probably not an accident

that the U.S. and Canada have the relative positions that they do on this chart, since it is based on data from after I moved north.

A problematic entry in the continuing series

A loyal reader points me to this bizarre story in which a Kentucky man is claiming caffeine intoxication as a defense against murder. Apparently there is some (but slim) precedent for this.

Counterpoint: he's claiming that his caffeine sources were "sodas, energy drinks and diet pills." I've never endorsed energy drinks or diet pills, and distrust the thought that caffeine is the only relevant ingredient in them.

Counter-counterpoint: "Reports and case records say that during that time, he was drinking five or six soft drinks and energy drinks a day, along with taking diet pills; it all added up to more than 400 milligrams of caffeine daily. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — the American Psychiatric Association's guidebook for the classification of mental disorders — defines a caffeine overdose as more than 300 mg."

If 400 mg of caffeine provides a legal defense against a murder charge, then I've been entitled to at least two, usually three kills a day for years now. I'm starting my list for this afternoon right now.

I'm going to live forever, part 4,872 in a continuing series

Good news:

Drinking several cups of tea or coffee a day appears to protect against heart disease, a 13-year-long study [of 40,000 people] from the Netherlands has found.

Less good news:

Consuming between two to four coffees a day was also linked to a reduced risk... the protective effect ceased with more than four cups of coffee a day,

But at least:

even those who drank this much were no more likely to die of any cause, including stroke and cancer, than those who abstained.

I'm going to live forever, etc.

I may be a very unreliable blogger these days, but at the very least, I always link to this kind of good news.

I'm going to live forever, part 1,754: Elixir of Olympians

I was sent this delightful piece by Canadian Olympian Clara Hughes about the real home field advantage: access to one's own espresso machine the morning of a race.

Fair and balanced blogging

I really don't think funny comics with such a pernicious and false message should be allowed. I may form one of those groups like the one that defends hamburgers against Oprah's slander or that tries to get X- ratings on movies that have cigarettes in them.

But since I routinely give the other side of the story, here's the entertaining latest installment of "Multiplex"'s odd anti-caffeine story arc.

I'm going to live forever, part of a continuing series

Coffee, already thought to have a prophylactic effect against Alzheimer's, may actually partially reverse its effects, at the eminently moderate level of five cups per day.

The caffeine won't kill you...

but the water will. That's why it's safer to stick with espressos.

This many cups of coffee will kill you:

[...]an oral lethal dose for an 80kg human would extrapolate to 15,360mg of total caffeine. This technically is equivalent to the amount of caffeine absorbed from drinking 113 cups of coffee really really really quickly. However, the reality is that this figure would instead result in a fatality due to water intoxication since 113 cups is close to 30 litres of water.

Bush, Obama, and the size of government

As my old friend Todd Seavey details, he and I have made a bet on the growth of government under the Obama and Bush administrations, by three measures, in each case comparing Obama's [first] term with GWB's first term: the change in federal expenditures as a % of GDP over four years, the change in total government expenditure at all levels over four years, and the change in the federal budget, in percentage terms from its starting point, measured in constant dollars.

As will surprise few of either Todd's readers or mine, he's predicting socialist apocalypse under Obama, and I'm... not.

Discussing Obama's budget reminds me to link to this NYT profile of Peter Orszag, who I certainly can't call an old friend since we haven't been in touch at all since high school, but who was a friendly acquaintance from the high school debate team and my partner for one or two tournaments. I liked this bit:

As he heads to his job as White House budget director, he already seems to pulse with energy, but he asks his driver to stop at Starbucks for enormous doses of iced and hot tea. His epic caffeine intake concerned him until he solved the problem with typical Orszagian efficiency: he underwent genetic testing, confirmed that he could safely metabolize large amounts and happily moved on to the next worry.

They can test for that? And what, precisely, counted as "epic?" Peter's probably almost a foot taller than I am; I'm now curious how my intake compares.

And that, in turn, reminds me to finally blog about the most important article from the NYT in the past several days, mentioned to me by several sources. If I were putting up a separate post about it, its headline would of course be "I'm going to live forever... and break some Olympic records while I'm at it: part of a continuing series."

So even as sports stars from baseball players to cyclists to sprinters are pilloried for using performance enhancing drugs, one of the best studied performance enhancers is fine for them or anyone else to use. And it is right there in a cup of coffee or a can of soda.

Exercise physiologists have studied caffeine’s effects in nearly every iteration: Does it help sprinters? Marathon runners? Cyclists? Rowers? Swimmers? Athletes whose sports involve stopping and starting like tennis players? The answers are yes and yes and yes and yes.[...]

Now, Dr. Tarnopolsky and others report that caffeine increases the power output of muscles by releasing calcium that is stored in muscle. The effect can enable athletes to keep going longer or to go faster in the same length of time. Caffeine also affects the brain’s sensation of exhaustion, that feeling that it’s time to stop, you can’t go on any more. That may be one way it improves endurance, Dr. Tarnopolsky said.

The performance improvement in controlled laboratory settings can be 20 to 25 percent, Dr. Tarnopolsky said. But in the real world, including all comers, the improvement may average about 5 percent, still significant if you want to get your best time or even win a race.[...]

The beneficial effects on exercise, though, remain. Even if you are a regular coffee drinker, if you have a cup of coffee before a workout or a race, you will do better, Dr. Tarnopolsky said. “There is no question about it,” he added.

He puts the caffeine research to use when he trains and competes. Dr. Tarnopolsky is an elite triathlete, ski orienteer and trail runner who has competed at national and international levels. And, he said, he loves coffee: “I love the smell. I love the taste. It’s heaven.”

And before a race? He always has a cup.

I've gotten steadily more athletic over my adult life. I think we now have an explanation as to why that is.

I'm going to live forever, cancer-free; part of a continuing series

via Pejman Yousefzadeh, the latest in the parade of good news about the health benefits of the nectar of the gods.

A cup of joe a day may help keep skin cancer away: A new study shows that caffeine helps kill off human cells damaged by ultraviolet light, one of the key triggers of several types of skin cancer.

The finding, detailed in Feb. 26 online issue of the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, could one day lead to the development of caffeine creams or ointments to help reverse the effects of UV damage in humans and prevent some skin cancers.

Nonmelanoma skin cancers, which rarely metastasize or cause death, are the most common form of cancer in humans, with more than 1 million new cases occurring each year in the United States alone. (Melanoma is, however, one of the deadlier cancers.)

Exposure to ultraviolet light is one of the most important factors in causing nonmelanoma cancers. The rays cause DNA damage to skin cells, which then mutate or become cancerous.

Several studies have shown that people who regularly drink coffee or tea seem to have lower incidences of nonmelanoma skin cancers. One recent study of more than 90,000 Caucasian women found that with each additional cup of caffeinated coffee consumed, there was an associated 5 percent decreased risk of developing one of these skin cancers (decaf coffee had no effect).

I'm going to live, and keep my wits about me, forever, part of a continuing series

Coffee Linked to Lower Dementia Risk : "A team of Swedish and Danish researchers tracked coffee consumption in a group of 1,409 middle-age men and women for an average of 21 years. During that time, 61 participants developed dementia, 48 with Alzheimer’s disease.

After controlling for numerous socioeconomic and health factors, including high cholesterol and high blood pressure, the scientists found that the subjects who had reported drinking three to five cups of coffee daily were 65 percent less likely to have developed dementia, compared with those who drank two cups or less. People who drank more than five cups a day also were at reduced risk of dementia, the researchers said, but there were not enough people in this group to draw statistically significant conclusions."

Espressotarianism

I've made pretty plain that I'm not voting Libertarian in this presidential election, though I wish Barr and the LP well and wish them many votes. I've voted Libertarian for President several times, and will vote Libertarian downticket when possible this year. I'd be thrilled to see Barr win 49.9% of the vote and crush McCain for second place. But I don't will that Barr be elected president, and that prevents me from voting for him.

But this sure does warm the cockles of my heart, and is the sort of thing that couldn't be allowed to go unnoticed on this blog.

He is fifty-nine but has the stamina of a college freshman—he consumes up to fifteen shots of espresso a day, typically in five-shot installments.

By contrast, the guy I'm actually voting for sometimes smokes cigarettes. If I were voting with the "people who remind me of me" standard that, for example, people invoke when explaining their support of Sarah Palin, then the fact that Obama and I have both taught courses at Chicago Law might well be trumped by the difference between cigarettes and 15 shots of espresso per day.

(At some point I'd like someone to ask some voter who invokes the "people who remind me of me" standard about the arrogance and narcissism of it-- what makes you so great that similitude to you is a relevant criterion for the presidency? I know that there are answers to the question and defensible reasons for identity-politics voting: "people who remind me of me are more likely to take the interests of people like me into account, and I think people like me are unjustly neglected by a system dominated by liberal elites/ whites/ Christians/ the professional class/ etc." But even when those reasons are adequate ones, there's often also a level of narcissism that goes unexamined. But now I've wandered far off-topic.)

Of possible interest...

to the students who, in last term's evaluations, criticized me for drinking my in-class coffee from environment-unfriendly disposable cups instead of reusable mugs.

What is the "greenest" way to drink coffee around the office?

If you use a disposable cup, it's going to linger a long while on this Earth—polystyrene isn't biodegradable at all, and for all practical purposes, you shouldn't expect a paper cup to degrade very fast in a landfill, either.[...]

Pound-for-pound, petroleum-based polystyrene is a pretty bad material—it takes twice as much energy to produce a gram of polystyrene as it does to produce the same quantity of ceramic. But you'll need at least 70 times as much energy to produce a ceramic mug as you will to manufacture a polystyrene cup, and probably even more to produce a stainless steel mug.

How could that be? Simply speaking, it's all about mass: A polystyrene cup is much lighter than a permanent mug. That means it requires far less material, so the fact that it's made from petroleum is more than made up for by the greater mass of the mugs. [...]

Washing your mug will add to its energy burden. Research from the early 1990s suggests that each time you clean a mug in the dishwasher, it takes about as much energy—and would probably produce as many emissions—as it takes simply to produce a new polystyrene cup[...] As the Lantern has pointed out before, washing the mug by hand may not absolve you, either— although you can help your case by using cold water.

And, NB: in an office without a useful dishwashing sink, the likely prospect is of washing the mug multiple times-- say, rinsing it once in hot water in the rest room, and then taking it home regularly to run through the dishwasher. In other words, it's highly tricky to figure out the math here.

Update: Chris Lawrence's and Nick Troester's reactions make me worry that the tone of this post came out wrong-- I was only amused by the commentary in evaluations, and it built on some running jokes in class. One anonymous benefactor gave me a stainless steel McGill coffee mug to try to reform my sinner's ways. It was all in good fun.

Incipient immortality, part of a continuing series

Via faithful reader and sometime co-consumer Professor J, the New York Times provides this round-up of all the most important recent health news. It's Science, so it must be true.

The standard model of sociophysics

at orgtheory. A very important chart!