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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain stuff. From How Stuff Works, Hey, rain

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Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren Bogle bam here coffee is a beverage with

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Speaker 1: laura and legend as rich as a double caramel latte,

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Speaker 1: but far more contrary. An advertisement from the first coffee

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Speaker 1: house in England promoted coffee is good against sore eyes

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Speaker 1: and excellent to prevent and cure the dropsy, gout and scurvy.

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Speaker 1: But in the early seventeen hundreds, Germans believed the beverage

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Speaker 1: made women sterile. But an old wives tale states that

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Speaker 1: if bubbles appear in your java, you're due to come

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Speaker 1: into some money, which wouldn't be a bad thing considering

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Speaker 1: the price of a cup of these days. In more

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Speaker 1: recent times, another idea took hold of the public's imagination

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Speaker 1: regarding coffee, that it had the power to stunt a

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Speaker 1: child's growth. But just as a pot of coffee boiling

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Speaker 1: over doesn't actually mean that it's going to rain, which

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Speaker 1: was a thing that people thought at one point. The

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Speaker 1: assertation that the drink makes for a nation of hobbits

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Speaker 1: has been proven false. How coffee got associated with this

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Speaker 1: smith is clo in the espresso steam of history, but

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Speaker 1: most experts agree that it has something to do with

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Speaker 1: an early study linking caffeine to reduced bone mass and osteoporosis.

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Speaker 1: Those studies, however, were conducted on elderly people whose diets

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Speaker 1: were lacking in calcium, which could easily have explained the

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Speaker 1: loss of bone mass. Subsequent studies showed that women ages

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Speaker 1: sixty five to seventy seven who drank about eighteen ounces

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Speaker 1: of caffeine daily did have greater bone loss over a

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Speaker 1: three year period than those who did not, But the

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Speaker 1: effects occurred only in women with unusual variations in their

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Speaker 1: vitamin D cell receptors, and the effects were completely mitigated

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Speaker 1: if the women ingested their recommended daily one thousand, two

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Speaker 1: hundred milligrams of calcium. Focusing exclusively on children, a more

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Speaker 1: recent study tracked eighty one teenagers for six years. The

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Speaker 1: result there was no difference in bone density between the

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Speaker 1: biggest buzz catchers and those who drank the least amount

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Speaker 1: of caffeine. But just because a cup of Joe won't

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Speaker 1: keep your little Joe's and Josephine's pint sized all their

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Speaker 1: lives thus mean that there isn't cause to be concerned

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Speaker 1: about children and coffee these days, coffee creations can seem

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Speaker 1: more like a dessert than a simple pick me up

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Speaker 1: in a cup. The Starbucks menu include such treats as

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Speaker 1: a mint mocha chip frappuccino blended with chocolate and tapped

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Speaker 1: with whipped cream, while Duncan Donuts offers up vanilla bean

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Speaker 1: coolatta's that list corn syrup not once, but twice on

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Speaker 1: their ingredients list, along with sugar and sweetened condensed skim milk.

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Speaker 1: So although it's been proven that there are relatively minor

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Speaker 1: health issues associated with caffeine jitteriness, anxiety, heartburn, insomnia, it's

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Speaker 1: actually the other ingredients that are added to coffee, especially sugar,

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Speaker 1: that have nutritionists worried. It's no secret that America has

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Speaker 1: a burgeting problem with childhood obesity and diabetes, and eight

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Speaker 1: hundred and sixty calorie packed drinks like the large Kolatta

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Speaker 1: are not helping. This is particularly troubling when, according to

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Speaker 1: the National Coffee Association, eighteen to twenty four year olds

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Speaker 1: represent the fastest growing segment of people turning on to

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Speaker 1: coffee every year. In addition to expand and young waistlines,

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Speaker 1: coffee can cause the amouth to dry out, which contributes

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Speaker 1: to tooth decay. The problem is compounded by the fact

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Speaker 1: that the tanic acid in coffee can stain teeth enamel,

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Speaker 1: giving some grins an unwanted mocuchi. No tinge, and coffee

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Speaker 1: doesn't just affect the health of twenty some things. Pregnant

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Speaker 1: women are also warned to consume no more than two

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Speaker 1: cups per day. Researchers in England found that pregnant women

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Speaker 1: who drank more than two hundred milligrams of caffeine per day,

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Speaker 1: the amount in two average sized cups of coffee, were

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Speaker 1: more likely to give birth to underweight babies. Lower birth

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Speaker 1: weights can also lead to spontaneous miscarriages, another health concern

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Speaker 1: with which caffeine has previously been associated. But if you

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Speaker 1: relatively limit your caffeine intake, drink enough water, get enough calcium,

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Speaker 1: and don't add shovelfuls of sugar to your java, the

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Speaker 1: health benefits of coffee may far outweigh its negatives. Far

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Speaker 1: from being the devil's drink, as coffee was once called

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Speaker 1: by Christians in the fifteen hundreds, study upon study has

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Speaker 1: proven that coffee can have health benefits. At one time,

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Speaker 1: coffee was thought to have negative cardiovascular effects, including heart

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Speaker 1: attack and abnormal heart rhythms, although it does cause minor

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Speaker 1: and temporary increases in blood pressure. According to an Iowa

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Speaker 1: women's health study that tract twenty seven thousand women for

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Speaker 1: fifteen years, those who consumed one to three daily cups

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Speaker 1: of coffee reduced their overall risk of cardiovascular disease by

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Speaker 1: It was also once thought that coffee could be a

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Speaker 1: major contributing factor in pancreatic cancer, due to a Harvard study. However,

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Speaker 1: coffee's role as carston gen has since been disproven, and

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Speaker 1: current research has shown that it can help ward off

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Speaker 1: breast and uterine cancer in women but white. There's more,

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Speaker 1: A study of over a hundred and twenty five thousand

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Speaker 1: members of the Kaiser Permanente Health Plan showed that heavy

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Speaker 1: alcohol drinkers cut their risk of cirrhosis by per cup

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Speaker 1: of coffee per day, and even among non tipplers. Coffee

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Speaker 1: has been shown to slash liver cancer risk, and two

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Speaker 1: global studies have shown that coffee reduces the risk of

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Speaker 1: type two diabetes, sometimes up to even better. Those beneficial

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Speaker 1: effects are related to chlorogenic acid, which is found both

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Speaker 1: in decaf and regular brews. However, excess consumption of anything,

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Speaker 1: including caffeine, is never a good idea. The magic number

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Speaker 1: four coffees benefits seems to be between one and four

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Speaker 1: cups a day, So while the old wives tale about

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Speaker 1: coffee stunting your growth isn't really true, another piece of

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Speaker 1: traditional wisdom certainly is all things in moderation. Today's episode

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Speaker 1: was written by Michael Franco and produced by Tyler Clang,

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Speaker 1: with kind engineering assistance from Ramsey Young. For more on

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Speaker 1: this and lots of other piping hot topics, visit our

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Speaker 1: home planet, how Stuff Works dot com