Coffee Decreases Risk Of Depression

Here’s a very interesting study done that may change how much coffee you drink!

Coffee, Caffeine, and Risk of Depression Among Women.
Arch Intern Med. 2011; 171(17):1571-8 (ISSN: 1538-3679)
Lucas M; Mirzaei F; Pan A; Okereke OI; Willett WC; O’Reilly ÉJ; Koenen K; Ascherio A
Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, and Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, 655 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115, USA.

BACKGROUND: Caffeine is the world’s most widely used central nervous system stimulant, with approximately 80% consumed in the form of coffee. However, studies that analyze prospectively the relationship between coffee or caffeine consumption and depression risk are scarce.

METHODS: A total of 50,739 US women (mean age, 63 years) free of depressive symptoms at baseline (in 1996) were prospectively followed up through June 1, 2006. Consumption of caffeine was measured from validated questionnaires completed from May 1, 1980, through April 1, 2004, and computed as cumulative mean consumption with a 2-year latency period applied. Clinical depression was defined as self-reported physician-diagnosed depression and antidepressant use. Relative risks of clinical depression were estimated using Cox proportional hazards regression models.

RESULTS: During 10 years of follow-up (1996-2006), 2607 incident cases of depression were identified. Compared with women consuming 1 or less cup of caffeinated coffee per week, the multivariate relative risk of depression was 0.85 (95% confidence interval, 0.75-0.95) for those consuming 2 to 3 cups per day and 0.80 (0.64-0.99; P for trend

CONCLUSIONS: In this large longitudinal study, we found that depression risk decreases with increasing caffeinated coffee consumption. Further investigations are needed to confirm this finding and to determine whether usual caffeinated coffee consumption can contribute to depression prevention.

Original article found on MedScape

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A couple of cups of coffee a day may be all that is needed to reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s disease, new research suggests.

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US neuroscience Gary Arendash said: “The new findings provide evidence that caffeine could be a viable ‘treatment’ for established Alzheimer’s disease, and not simply a protective strategy. That’s important because caffeine is a safe drug for most people. It easily enters the brain, and it appears to directly affect the disease process.” As the leading researcher, he plans to follow up the initial results from animal experiments with human patient trials.

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A key aspect of Alzheimer’s is sticky clumps of abnormal protein in the brain called beta amyloid plaques. Mice with a rodent equivalent of the disease showed a 50 per cent reduction in levels of amyloid protein in their brains after scientists spiked their drinking water with caffeine. The change was reflected in their behaviour as the mice developed better memories and quicker thinking.

Dr Arendash’s team, from the Florida Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centre in Tampa, studied 55 mice, genetically engineered to develop dementia symptoms identical to those of Alzheimer’s. At the age of 18 to 19 months, about 70 in human years, the mice were showing signs of memory impairment. The researchers then gave half the mice water containing caffeine while the other half continued to drink ordinary water.

Humans receiving an equivalent dose for their body weight would be consuming two cups of strong “coffee shop” coffee a day.

At the end of the two-month study, the caffeine-drinking mice performed far better on tests of memory and thinking than mice given “straight” water. Their memories were as sharp as those of healthy older mice without dementia. Almost half the abnormal protein previously seen when the brains of Alzheimer’s mice were examined had vanished after two months. The study was published online in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

However, the scientists found no evidence that caffeine boosted the mental performance of healthy young brains. Normal mice given caffeinated drinking water throughout their lives had memories no better than those raised on regular water when they reached old age.

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THE PREVAILING THEORY of why caffeine increases alertness took shape only in the early 1970s. The theory holds that caffeine interferes with the depressant effects of adenosine, which is one of the chemicals that the body makes to control neural activity~ Adenosine triggers a serieThe Power Of Caffeine

THE PREVAILING THEORY of why caffeine increases alertness took shape only in the early 1970s. The theory holds that caffeine interferes with the depressant effects of adenosine, which is one of the chemicals that the body makes to control neural activity~ Adenosine triggers a series of slowing effects: it depresses mood and alertness, lowers the need to urinate and slows gastric secretion and respiration. After it is released by nerve endings in the brain, adenosine must reach receptors on the surface of certain brain cells in order to work. Caffeine, the theory has it, acts as an adenosine impostor. Molecules of caffeine counterfeit molecules of adenosine, locking into the adenosine receptors on brain cells. They fool the body into thinking that adenosine is circulating, but they produce no depressive effect of their own.

Caffeine speeds you up, then, by not slowing you down. Its effects are the opposite of what adenosine does: it makes you feel brighter and more alert, increases gastric secretion, makes you urinate more and stimulates respiration.

Proponents of caffeine speak of its ability to increase vigilance and heighten the ability to perform various tasks. Its effects are most pronounced, how- ever, when compared with performance levels that are low because of fatigue, boredom or caffeine abstinence. Too, its effects seem to vary by personality type. For example, caffeine appears to help extroverts keep performing vigilance tasks better than introverts, who can evidently plow through such tasks unassisted.

Despite the generations of writers who have thought that coffee helped them think more clearly, caffeine seems only to increase intellectual speed, not intellectual power. Subjects in experiments do things like read and fill out crossword puzzles faster-but not, unfortunately, more accurately.

Caffeine quickens reaction time and can enhance both hand-eye coordination and the capacity of muscles to work. This boost to overall endurance has led to its use by cyclists and runners. But caffeine also has a diuretic effect, increasing frequency of urination. Caffeinated drinks are thus dehydrating, good for neither athletes nor flyers: dehydration is one of the worst problems of air travel and a prime cause of jet-lag.

Caffeine speeds up the metabolism and makes you burn calories faster, although not so much faster that it will help you lose weight. Its inclusion in over-the-counter diet pills in place of prescription-only amphetamines (“speed”) seems to be largely ineffective. Amphetamines, which diminish appetite, work differently than caffeine does on the brain.

This general quickening does not mean that coffee can sober you up – either black or with milk. Your motor functions will be just as impaired by alcohol as they were minutes before you downed that cup of coffee, and even if you feel more awake, you’re just as dangerous a driver. Similarly, caffeine does not counteract the effects of phenobarbital and other barbiturates. It does, however, help reverse the impairment of cognitive activity caused by benzodiazepines, the compounds that are the basis of Valium and many other tranquilizers. This reversal affects how you think as opposed to how fast you react. If you are taking a muscle relaxant or tranquilizer that you think might be one of these compounds, ask your doctor; he or she will probably advise you not to defeat the effects of the drug by drinking coffee.

Some researchers speculate that a similar restorative effect on cognitive activity might take place in the interaction between caffeine and alcohol, but no one yet knows. Remember, though, that the question is whether caffeine can help you think more clearly after you have drunk alcohol – not whether it will improve your reflexes. No one imagines that coffee can make you a safer driver after you’ve been drinking.

Besides being a self-prescribed antidepressant and alertness drug, caffeine has been shown to be useful to people with asthma, since it works as a bronchodilator, meaning that it widens the air passages in the lungs and eases breathing. It might even be something of an aphrodisiac, if the results of a University of Michigan study can be generally applied: the study showed that older subjects were more likely to be sexually active if they were coffee drinkers than if they were not.

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