The article.

At this rate, I'll live to over a hundred. Assuming the article is true.

I saw a thing about this on TV. They said that coffee is the primary source of antioxidants in the average American's diet, but that tea is still richer in them. Also, if you're going to drink mass amounts of coffee for the antioxidents, most of it should be decaf -- the way the caffiene raises your blood pressure kind of undoes all the good the antioxidents do.

Interesting. Sounds pretty similar to red wine - a serving or maybe two max per day is actually pretty good for you. Anything beyond that and you're just asking for other problems. ;-)

Hopefully people don't run out and add 2 frapuccinos to their daily diets after reading this. Those are packed with so much fat and sugar and caloric content (and so little actual coffee!) that the negative health aspects definitely outweigh the positives.

I prefer raw, unprocess chocolate. All the antioxidents you could want, in handy chocolate containers.

So... I won't be dying of cancer, just sleep deprivation?
Hmm.

I've seen some studies that suggest caffeine helps prevent skin cancer, and various diseases such as Parkinson's.

Of course, all that is based on mouse research. What they did was inject some mice with caffeine, and then exposed them to UV rays. The caffeine mice developed far fewer lesions than the non-caffeinemice.

And...well, you don't want to drink a lot of caffeine all at once. You want small amounts over the course of the day.

I drink lots of coffee and tea, so yay longevity! (And I have a grandfather who is healthy and independent at 86, one great grandmother who lived on her own till 97 and died at 103, and my dead grandparents died at 76 and 81, so...yay!)

Reminds me of what happened when that study came out saying that chubby people lived longer than skinny people. People ran out an ordered the bacon on waffles with extra lard. People always ignore the "in moderation" part.

So does that mean I can drink ten espresso's over the course of twelve hours? There isn't THAT much coffee.

Yeah, and I heard that the study included skinny people that were skinny because they were sick, which naturally biased the positive results towards the fatter people.

You know you have to wonder how people get the results for statistics and studies and stuff. It is firightningly easy to make statistics say whatever you want.

Example: You could conduct a survey to prove that taller people are better spellers. All you have to do to get those results is compare the spelling abilities of toddlers and college students.

Seen on a page of statistics quotes:

Nicotine has been shown to prevent the onset of ulcerative colitis - doesn't mean that smoking is good for you though...

Its like with anything - there's a good and bad side to pretty much everything you ingest - even water and oxygen...

You can get around that though, if you fully document every aspect of your study. Sample group selection, etc. And researchers usually use random sample groups (Like, they randomly assign people to a caffeine or non-caffeine group and watch what happens). In this case it's impractical to do that, but I wouldn't assume the sampling criteria were invalid just because the statistics suggest something that's counterintuitive.

And besides..there are statistical methods you can use to eliminate the impact of confounding variables that might mitigate drinking coffee or not drinking coffee. 'Multiple regression' analyses to be specific. Basically what they do are find the correlation between other variables such as age, gender, etc, and subtract the average effect out of the results.

There might be some other mitigating variable they didn't think of, though. The thing is, the scientists who conducted the study are fully realistic about the shortcomings and possible uncertainty-of-cause of the study. Just, the news articles tend to omit those shortcomings, and all you hear is the conclusion, not the 'But..'

That sounds like something intestinal. And nicotine makes your intestines active. As in smoke a few and you need to take a dump.

There was one guy who'd dipped hard for years. He went in for surgery and his abdomen started to swell. They realized he'd been dipping so much for so long that his intestines couldn't function without nicotine. A couple of twists later the gas was able to move through his plumbing.

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_372.html

I don't put too much stock in any one report. Two months later they'll be saying coffee is the biggest health risk again. Actually they've been saying for a long time that coffee and caffeine is bad because its an acclerant and increases blood pressure.