Drinking coffee could lead to a longer life, scientist says

Here's another reason to start the day with a cup of joe: Scientists have found that people who drink coffee appear to live longer.

Drinking coffee was associated with a lower risk of death due to heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and respiratory and kidney disease for African-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Latinos and whites.

People who consumed a cup of coffee a day were 12 percent less likely to die compared to those who didn't drink coffee. This association was even stronger for those who drank two to three cups a day - 18 percent reduced chance of death.

Lower mortality was present regardless of whether people drank regular or decaffeinated coffee, suggesting the association is not tied to caffeine, said Veronica W. Setiawan, lead author of the study and an associate professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

A small cup of coffee. By Julius Schorzman (Own work) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

"We cannot say drinking coffee will prolong your life, but we see an association," Setiawan said. "If you like to drink coffee, drink up! If you're not a coffee drinker, then you need to consider if you should start."

The study, which will be published in the July 11 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, used data from the Multiethnic Cohort Study, a collaborative effort between the University of Hawaii Cancer Centre and the Keck School of Medicine.

The ongoing Multiethnic Cohort Study has more than 215,000 participants and bills itself as the most ethnically diverse study examining lifestyle risk factors that may lead to cancer.

"Until now, few data have been available on the association between coffee consumption and mortality in non-whites in the United States and elsewhere," the study stated. "Such investigations are important because lifestyle patterns and disease risks can vary substantially across racial and ethnic backgrounds, and findings in one group may not necessarily apply to others."

Since the association was seen in four different ethnicities, Setiawan said it is safe to say the results apply to other groups.

"This study is the largest of its kind and includes minorities who have very different lifestyles," Setiawan said. "Seeing a similar pattern across different populations gives stronger biological backing to the argument that coffee is good for you whether you are white, African-American, Latino or Asian."

Previous research by USC and others have indicated that drinking coffee is associated with reduced risk of several types of cancer, diabetes, liver disease, Parkinson's disease, Type 2 diabetes and other chronic diseases.

Setiawan, who drinks one to two cups of coffee daily, said any positive effects from drinking coffee are far-reaching because of the number of people who enjoy or rely on the beverage every day.

"Coffee contains a lot of antioxidants and phenolic compounds that play an important role in cancer prevention," Setiawan said. "Although this study does not show causation or point to what chemicals in coffee may have this 'elixir effect,' it is clear that coffee can be incorporated into a healthy diet and lifestyle."

About 62 percent of Americans drink coffee daily, a 5 percent increase from 2016 numbers, reported the National Coffee Association.

As a research institution, USC has scientists from across disciplines working to find a cure for cancer and better ways for people to manage the disease.

The Keck School of Medicine and USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center manage a state-mandated database called the Los Angeles Cancer Surveillance Program, which provides scientists with essential statistics on cancer for a diverse population.

Researchers from the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center have found that drinking coffee lowers the risk of colorectal cancer.

But drinking piping hot coffee or beverages probably causes cancer in the esophagus, according to a World Health Organization panel of scientists that included Mariana Stern from the Keck School of Medicine.

In some respects, coffee is regaining its honor for wellness benefits. After 25 years of labelling coffee a carcinogen linked to bladder cancer, the World Health Organization last year announced that drinking coffee reduces the risk for liver and uterine cancer.

"Some people worry drinking coffee can be bad for you because it might increase the risk of heart disease, stunt growth or lead to stomach ulcers and heartburn," Setiawan said. "But research on coffee have mostly shown no harm to people's health."

Setiawan and her colleagues examined the data of 185,855 African-Americans (17 percent), Native Hawaiians (7 percent), Japanese-Americans (29 percent), Latinos (22 percent) and whites (25 percent) ages 45 to 75 at recruitment. Participants answered questionnaires about diet, lifestyle, and family and personal medical history.

They reported their coffee drinking habits when they entered the study and updated them about every five years, checking one of nine boxes that ranged from "never or hardly ever" to "4 or more cups daily." They also reported whether they drank caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee. The average follow-up period was 16 years.

Sixteen percent of participants reported that they did not drink coffee, 31 percent drank one cup per day, 25 percent drank two to three cups per day and 7 percent drank four or more cups per day. The remaining 21 percent had irregular coffee consumption habits.

Over the course of the study, 58,397 participants - about 31 percent - died. Cardiovascular disease (36 percent) and cancer (31 percent) were the leading killers.

The data was adjusted for age, sex, ethnicity, smoking habits, education, pre-existing disease, vigorous physical exercise and alcohol consumption.

Setiawan's previous research found that coffee reduces the risk of liver cancer and chronic liver disease. She is currently examining how coffee is associated with the risk of developing specific cancers.

Researchers from the University of Hawaii Cancer Centre and the National Cancer Institute contributed to this study. The study used data from the Multiethnic Cohort Study, which is supported by a $19,008,359 grant from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health.

For more information, visit:-

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/07/170710172118.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee

http://www.prlabs.co.uk/lab-supplies.php?N=caffeine-usp-grade&Id=679

What molecules you leave on your phone reveal about your lifestyle

We leave behind trace chemicals, molecules and microbes on every object we touch. By sampling the molecules on cell phones, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences were able to construct lifestyle sketches for each phone's owner, including diet, preferred hygiene products, health status and locations visited. This proof-of-concept study, published November 14 by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could have a number of applications, including criminal profiling, airport screening, medication adherence monitoring, clinical trial participant stratification and environmental exposure studies.

"You can imagine a scenario where a crime scene investigator comes across a personal object - like a phone, pen or key - without fingerprints or DNA, or with prints or DNA not found in the database. They would have nothing to go on to determine who that belongs to," said senior author Pieter Dorrestein, PhD, professor in UC San Diego School of Medicine and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. "So we thought - what if we take advantage of left-behind skin chemistry to tell us what kind of lifestyle this person has?"

Mobile phone evolution. By Anders (Own work) , via Wikimedia Commons

In a 2015 study, Dorrestein's team constructed 3D models to illustrate the molecules and microbes found at hundreds of locations on the bodies of two healthy adult volunteers. Despite a three-day moratorium on personal hygiene products before the samples were collected, the researchers were surprised to find that the most abundant molecular features in the skin swabs still came from hygiene and beauty products, such as sunscreen.

"All of these chemical traces on our bodies can transfer to objects," Dorrestein said. "So we realized we could probably come up with a profile of a person's lifestyle based on chemistries we can detect on objects they frequently use."

Thirty-nine healthy adult volunteers participated in Dorrestein's latest study. The team swabbed four spots on each person's cell phone - an object we tend to spend a lot of time touching - and eight spots on each person's right hand, for a total of nearly 500 samples. Then they used a technique called mass spectrometry to detect molecules from the samples. They identified as many molecules as possible by comparing them to reference structures in the GNPS database, a crowdsourced mass spectrometry knowledge repository and annotation website developed by Dorrestein and co-author Nuno Bandeira, PhD, associate professor at the Jacobs School of Engineering and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at UC San Diego.

With this information, the researchers developed a personalized lifestyle "read-out" from each phone. Some of the medications they detected on phones included anti-inflammatory and anti-fungal skin creams, hair loss treatments, anti-depressants and eye drops. Food molecules included citrus, caffeine, herbs and spices. Sunscreen ingredients and DEET mosquito repellant were detected on phones even months after they had last been used by the phone owners, suggesting these objects can provide long-term composite lifestyle sketches.

"By analyzing the molecules they've left behind on their phones, we could tell if a person is likely female, uses high-end cosmetics, dyes her hair, drinks coffee, prefers beer over wine, likes spicy food, is being treated for depression, wears sunscreen and bug spray - and therefore likely spends a lot of time outdoors - all kinds of things," said first author Amina Bouslimani, PhD, an assistant project scientist in Dorrestein's lab. "This is the kind of information that could help an investigator narrow down the search for an object's owner."

There are limitations, Dorrestein said. First of all, these molecular read-outs provide a general profile of person's lifestyle, but they are not meant to be a one-to-one match, like a fingerprint. To develop more precise profiles and for this method to be more useful, he said more molecules are needed in the reference database, particularly for the most common foods people eat, clothing materials, carpets, wall paints and anything else people come into contact with. He'd like to see a trace molecule database on the scale of the fingerprint database, but it's a large-scale effort that no single lab will be able to do alone.

Moving forward, Dorrestein and Bouslimani have already begun extending their study with an additional 80 people and samples from other personal objects, such as wallets and keys. They also hope to soon begin gathering another layer of information from each sample - identities of the many bacteria and other microbes that cover our skin and objects. In a 2010 study, their collaborator and co-author, Rob Knight, PhD, professor in the UC San Diego School of Medicine and Jacobs School of Engineering and director of the Center for Microbiome Innovation at UC San Diego, contributed to a study in which his team found they could usually match a computer keyboard to its owner just based on the unique populations of microbes the person left on it. At that time, they could make the match with a fair amount of accuracy, though not yet precisely enough for use in an investigation.

Beyond forensics, Dorrestein and Bouslimani imagine trace molecular read-outs could also be used in medical and environmental studies. For example, perhaps one day physicians could assess how well a patient is sticking with a medication regimen by monitoring metabolites on his or her skin. Similarly, patients participating in a clinical trial could be divided into subgroups based on how they metabolize the medication under investigation, as revealed by skin metabolites - then the medication could be given only to those patients who can metabolize it appropriately. Skin molecule read-outs might also provide useful information about a person's exposure to environmental pollutants and chemical hazards, such as in a high-risk workplace or a community living near a potential pollution source.

For more information visit:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161114152820.htm

http://www.prlabs.co.uk/lab-supplies.php?N=caffeine-usp-grade&Id=679

Fancy a coffee?

I don't know about you but I can't start the day without a cup of coffee to wake me up.  Other people drink tea but both contain caffeine and it's this that helps kick start your day.
 

Caffeine

Caffeine (C8H10N4O2), known medically as 1,3,7-trimethylxanthine, is a legal stimulant and diuretic used by a large percentage of the Earth's human inhabitants. It can be found naturally in drinks like coffee and tea, and has been artificially introduced into soft drinks like 'Coke' for example. Additionally, small amounts can be found in solid foods like chocolate. The primary method of obtaining pure caffeine is through the decaffeination of coffee and tea, and in this state caffeine appears as a fine white powder. When ingested, this powder is very bitter.

The Effects of Caffeine on the Human Body

The primary effect of caffeine on the human body, and the one that it is most often consumed for, is that of cardiac stimulation - caffeine gives the consumer an 'energy boost' that lasts for a period of time proportional to the amount of caffeine ingested. Cardiac stimulation is achieved indirectly through the release of epinephrine (adrenaline) by the pituitary gland; however, in order to get the pituitary to release epinephrine, caffeine must first cause an increase in nerve cell activity in the brain.

To do this, caffeine takes the place of adenosine, a naturally occurring chemical in the body that slows down nerve cell activity and dilates blood vessels to allow for the increased oxygen uptake necessary during sleep. Caffeine binds to adenosine receptor sites on nerve cells in the brain, and instead of slowing activity, it quickens the pace at which nerve cells fire, warding off drowsiness. It does this by lowering the trigger level for norepinephrine, increasing the likelihood that the firing of one nerve cell in the brain will cause neighbouring cells to fire. This increased activity in the brain alerts the pituitary gland, and it releases epinephrine, setting off the 'fight-or-flight' response in the human. One of the functions of the fight-or-flight response is to release sugar (stored in the liver in the form of glycogen) for immediate use; this is the source of the energy used in the 'boost' provided by ingesting caffeine.

How Caffeine Becomes Addictive

In addition to touching off the fight-or-flight response, caffeine also increases dopamine levels in the brain. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that activates the pleasure centre in the brain; by manipulating the level of dopamine, caffeine artificially makes the consumer feel good for a short period of time. This is the same mechanism used by both cocaine and heroin.

As well as providing an immediate 'feel-good' sensation, caffeine encourages long-term addiction by depriving the consumer of a good night's sleep. Because adenosine reception is essential to deep sleep and it is blocked by caffeine, consumers wake up feeling irritable, and use caffeine to mentally 'awaken' themselves so that they can function 'properly' - as though they had had a good night's sleep. In this way, a positive feedback loop is created, and consumers cannot abstain from caffeine consumption without adverse effects.

Positive Uses of Caffeine

Caffeine can be used in treatment of acute asthma - because of the overall vasodilation effect caffeine has on the human body, the airways in the lungs are also widened slightly (this effect is known specifically as bronchodilation), enabling someone afflicted with asthma to breathe more easily. While there are more asthma-specific drugs on the market, caffeine will do if there's nothing else around.

Another use of the vasodilation effect of caffeine can be found in headache relief; constriction of blood vessels in the brain can cause major headache pain, and caffeine relieves this pain by widening the blood vessels. For this reason, caffeine can be found in many specialised headache medicines.

Additionally, caffeine can be used to treat ADHD, a hyperactivity disorder. People with ADHD have a lowered ability to focus and a shortened attention span, and stimulants like caffeine (and Ritalin, the most frequently-used treatment for ADHD) allow for longer periods of intense concentration. Unfortunately, the side effects of caffeine make it impractical as a long term solution to most medical conditions.

While caffeine causes negative results when used in the long term, it is - like most things - safe in small amounts.

http://www.h2g2.com/approved_entry/A622414

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine