Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hi
Speaker 1: brain Stuff. I'm Lauren Vogelbaum and this this is another
Speaker 1: classic from our archives. In this episode we consider coffee,
Speaker 1: which I am drinking as I write this intro. Every
Speaker 1: few years, it seems there's another round of mildly sensational
Speaker 1: headlines about how it's great for you or the very worst.
Speaker 1: So let's break down the science. Hey, brain Stuff, Lauren
Speaker 1: vogel Bomb. Here. Coffee is a beverage with laura and legend,
Speaker 1: as rich as a double caramel latte, but far more contrary.
Speaker 1: An advertisement from the first coffee house in England promoted
Speaker 1: coffee is good against sore eyes and excellent to prevent
Speaker 1: and cure the dropsy, gout and scurvy. But in the
Speaker 1: early seventeen hundreds, Germans believed the beverage made women sterile.
Speaker 1: But an old wives tale states that have bubbles appear
Speaker 1: in your java, you're due to come into some money,
Speaker 1: which wouldn't be a bad thing considering the price of
Speaker 1: a cup of these days. In more recent times, another
Speaker 1: idea took hold of the public's imagination regarding coffee, that
Speaker 1: it had the power to stunt a child's growth. But
Speaker 1: just as a pot of coffee boiling over doesn't actually
Speaker 1: mean that it's going to rain, which was a thing
Speaker 1: that people thought at one point, the assertation that the
Speaker 1: drink makes for a nation of hobbits has been proven false.
Speaker 1: How coffee got associated with this myth is cloaked in
Speaker 1: the espresso steam of history, but most experts agree that
Speaker 1: it has something to do with an early study linking
Speaker 1: caffeine to reduced bone mass and osteoporosis. Those studies, however,
Speaker 1: were conducted on elderly people whose diets were lacking in calcium,
Speaker 1: which could easily have explained the loss of bone mass.
Speaker 1: Subsequent studies showed that women ages sixty five to seventy
Speaker 1: seven who drank about eighteen ounces of caffeine daily did
Speaker 1: have greater bone loss over a three year period than
Speaker 1: those who did not, but the effects occurred only in
Speaker 1: women with unusual variations in their vitamin D cell receptors,
Speaker 1: and the effects were completely mitigated if the women ingested
Speaker 1: they're recommended daily one thousand, two hundred milligrams of calcium.
Speaker 1: Focusing exclusively on children, A more recent study tract eighty
Speaker 1: one teenagers for six years. The result there was no
Speaker 1: difference in bone density between the biggest buzz catchers and
Speaker 1: those who drank the least amount of caffeine. But just
Speaker 1: because a cup of Joe won't keep your little Joe's
Speaker 1: and Josephine's pint sized all their lives doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: there isn't cause to be concerned about children and coffee.
Speaker 1: These days, coffee creations can seem more like a dessert
Speaker 1: than a simple pick me up in a cup. The
Speaker 1: Starbucks menu include such treats as a mint mocha chip
Speaker 1: frappuccino blended with chocolate and tapped with whipped cream, while
Speaker 1: Duncan Donuts offers up vanilla bean Kolata's that list corn
Speaker 1: syrup not once, but twice on their ingredients list, along
Speaker 1: with sugar and sweetened condensed skim milk. So although it's
Speaker 1: been proven that there are relatively minor health issues associated
Speaker 1: with caffeine jitteriness, anxiety, heartburn, insomnia, it's actually the other
Speaker 1: ingredients that are added to coffee, especially sugar, that have
Speaker 1: nutritionists worried. It's no secret that America has a burgeoning
Speaker 1: problem with childhood obesity and diabetes, and eight hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty calorie packed drinks like the large Koolatta are not helping.
Speaker 1: This is particularly troubling when, according to the National Coffee Association,
Speaker 1: eighteen to twenty four year olds represent the fastest growing
Speaker 1: segment of people turning on to coffee every year. In
Speaker 1: addition to expanding young waistlines, coffee can cause the mouth
Speaker 1: to dry out, which contributes to tooth decay. The problem
Speaker 1: is compounded by the fact that the tanic aciding coffee
Speaker 1: can stain teeth enamel, giving some grins an unwanted mocuchi
Speaker 1: no tinge and coffee doesn't just affect the health of twentysomethings.
Speaker 1: Pregnant women are also warned to consume no more than
Speaker 1: two cups per day. Researchers in England found that pregnant
Speaker 1: women who drank more than two hundred milligrams of caffeine
Speaker 1: per day, the amount in two average sized cups of coffee,
Speaker 1: were more likely to give birth to underweight babies. Lower
Speaker 1: birth weights can also lead to spontaneous miscarriages, another health
Speaker 1: concern with which caffeine has previously been associated. But if
Speaker 1: you relatively limit your caffeine intake, drink enough water, get
Speaker 1: enough calcium, and don't add shovelfuls of sugar to your java.
Speaker 1: The health benefits of coffee may far outweigh it's negatives.
Speaker 1: Far from being the devil's drink, as coffee was once
Speaker 1: called by Christians in the fifteen hundreds, study upon study
Speaker 1: has proven that coffee can have health benefits. At one time,
Speaker 1: coffee was thought to have negative cardiovascular effects, including heart
Speaker 1: attack and abnormal heart rhythms, although it does cause minor
Speaker 1: and temporary increases in blood pressure. According to an Iowa
Speaker 1: women's health study that tract twenty seven thousand women for
Speaker 1: fifteen years, those who consumed one to three daily cups
Speaker 1: of coffee reduced their overall risk of cardiovascular disease by
Speaker 1: It was also once thought that coffee could be a
Speaker 1: major contributing factor in pancreatic cancer due to a Harvard study. However,
Speaker 1: coffee's role as carston gen has since been disproven, and
Speaker 1: current research has shown that it can help ward off
Speaker 1: breast in uterine cancer in women but white. There's more.
Speaker 1: A study of over a hundred and twenty five thousand
Speaker 1: members of the Kaiser Permanente Health Plan showed that heavy
Speaker 1: alcohol drinkers cut their risk of cirrhosis by per cup
Speaker 1: of coffee per day, and even among non tipplers, coffee
Speaker 1: has been shown to slash liver cancer risk, and two
Speaker 1: global studies have shown that coffee reduces the risk of
Speaker 1: type two diabetes, sometimes up to even better. Those beneficial
Speaker 1: effects are related to chlorogenic acid, which is found both
Speaker 1: in decalf and regular brews. However, excess consumption of anything,
Speaker 1: including caffeine, is never a good idea. The magic number
Speaker 1: four coffees benefits seems to be between one and four
Speaker 1: cups a day. So while the old wives tale about
Speaker 1: coffee stunting your growth isn't really true, another piece of
Speaker 1: traditional wisdom certainly is all things in moderation today. This
Speaker 1: episode is based on the article will drinking coffee really
Speaker 1: Stunt Your Growth? On how stuff works dot com written
Speaker 1: by Michael Franco. Brain Stuff is production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio in partnership with how stuff Works dot Com, and
Speaker 1: it's produced by Tyler Clang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio,
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