The benefits of coffee….

I’m not sure I’ve blogged about my coffee habit for awhile, and when I say habit, I mean it. As a grad student at UCLA in the 70s, working in the Neuropsychiatric Institute, I was recruited as a participant in a study about caffeine. I was the perfect participant–I do not smoke, rarely drink alcohol, and I don’t use any other drugs, prescription, over the counter, or otherwise. At the end of my testing, the docs very politely suggested to me that my habit of 20 cups of coffee per day was a bit much, and that I should back it off to 8 or so.

I come from a long line of Swedish coffee drinkers. What is there about Scandinavians and their caffeine? It’s not like the coffee bean is something you can grow in Sweden. My grandmother, who lived well into her 80s, drank 18 cups per day. I lost track of how much my dad drank, but it was a lot. I did follow the UCLA docs’ advice, though, and cut down on my intake. I even quit completely for about an 8 year period when I had my three children (the fetus cannot metabolize caffeine very well, so I avoided all sources, including tea, colas, coffee, chocolate, etc.)

In the 1970s, there was a lot of bad press about caffeine, and people even suspected that it might be related to cancer until they figured out that anyone who likes caffeine is likely to love tobacco. In the ensuing years, though, caffeine’s reputation has been rehabilitated, and it’s almost treated as a health food today. People who drink caffeine are less likely to develop Parkinson’s (but watch your step here–this is a correlation, and people who smoke and drink alcohol are also less likely to develop Parkinson’s).

Across my desk this morning came two new caffeine studies. First, in over 80,000 women followed from 1980 to 2004, those who drank 2-3 cups of caffeinated coffee per day (woosies!) were 25 percent less likely to die of heart disease. The data also suggested a mild protective effect relative to cancer. Okay, this is a correlation again, so we have to be careful about how we talk about these results. It could be that coffee, caffeine, or some other component in the drink is actually healthy, but it could also be that people who choose to drink coffee are somehow systemically different than those who don’t.

The researchers relied on self-report for coffee consumption, too. If these participants are like me, they might not be paying attention to “cups” as in 8 ounces, so much as “cups” as in my giant latte mug that is my serving size.

Incidentally, Mr. F is worse than I am–he delighted in finding a new coffee pot that made 14 cups at a time, and yes, we make more than one pot per day chez Freberg. Mr. F’s traveling pet peeve is those in-room coffee pots that only make one cup at a time. He was a late-comer to the coffee habit, though, possibly due to his supertaster status (coffee is rather bitter for these folks). As an athlete at UCLA, Mr. F followed a pristine diet, and didn’t start drinking coffee in earnest until he was a New York marketing exec.

The second study reported that even the aroma of coffee can affect the brain, at least in rats. Smelling coffee increased expression of genes suspected of having anti-stress and antioxidant effects.

So excuse me while I start another pot….