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YAY for coffee!
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| starsearcher |
| quote: | Coffee reduces risk of type 2 diabetes
By Anne Harding Wed Nov 1, 12:31 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Coffee drinkers have a substantially lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes than people who abstain from the beverage, a new study shows.
This "striking" protective effect was seen in former coffee drinkers as well, Besa Smith and co-investigators at the University of California San Diego in La Jolla report.
"The growing body of literature definitely suggests strongly...that there is something there," she told Reuters Health in an interview. Just what that something is isn't clear, but it's probably not caffeine, she said, because the effect has also been observed with decaffeinated coffee.
Smith and her colleagues investigated 910 men and women, all of whom were 50 or older and free of diabetes when the study began.
When the subjects were followed-up about 8 years later, the former and current coffee drinkers were about 60 percent less likely to have developed type 2 diabetes.
The protective effects were still seen after the researchers adjusted the data for variations in physical activity, weight, blood pressure, smoking and sex among the subjects.
Coffee's protective effect was seen even among people who had impaired glucose tolerance, an early warning sign of diabetes, at the beginning of the study.
The researchers were unable to determine how much coffee people needed to drink to produce the protective effect. But study participants were generally not heavy coffee drinkers, Smith said.
"Given the increasing prevalence of obesity, impaired glucose tolerance, and diabetes, and the fact that the majority of adults in most of the Westernized world drink coffee daily, a coffee benefit could have widespread impact," she and her colleagues conclude. "Further investigation is warranted."
SOURCE: Diabetes Care, November 2006. |
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061101...fee_diabetes_dc |
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| starsearcher |
And while we're at it...YAY for red wine!!! :D
| quote: | Wine extract keeps fat mice healthy
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer 2 hours, 10 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Obese mice on a high-fat diet got the benefits of being thin — living healthier, longer lives — without the pain of dieting when they consumed huge doses of red wine extract, according to a landmark new study.
It's far too early to know if this would work in people, scientists said. But several were excited by the findings, calling it promising and even "spectacular."
The study by the Harvard Medical School and the National Institute on Aging shows that heavy doses of the red wine ingredient, resveratrol, lowers the rate of diabetes, liver problems and other fat-related ill effects in obese mice.
Fat-related deaths dropped 31 percent for obese mice on the supplement, compared to fat mice that got no treatment. The mice that got the wine extract also lived longer than expected, the study showed.
And astoundingly, the organs of the treated fat mice looked normal when they shouldn't have, said study lead author Dr. David Sinclair of Harvard Medical School.
"They're chubby but inside they look great," Sinclair said Wednesday afternoon. "You have to pinch yourself to make sure that this is all real, but the study involved 27 different researchers each of whom had a Eureka moment."
Sinclair said other preliminary work still under way shows the wine ingredient has promise in extending the lives of normal-sized mice, too.
Sinclair has a financial stake in the research. He is co-founder of a pharmaceutical firm, Sirtris Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., which is testing to see if the extract can safely be used to treat people with diabetes.
For years, red wine has been linked to numerous health benefits. But the new study, published online in the journal Nature on Thursday, shows that mammals given ultrahigh doses of resveratrol can get the good effects of cutting calories without actually doing it.
"If we're right about this, it would mean you could have the benefit of restricting calories without having to feel hungry," Sinclair said. "It's the Holy Grail of aging research."
Even though he called the work "tantalizing," Dr. Howard Eisenson, director of the Duke University Diet and Fitness Center urged people not to get too excited.
"All of us who practice medicine have learned that we can't leap from studies in the lab — particularly in lab animals — to what will happen in humans," Eisenson said.
Resveratrol, produced when plants are under stress, is found in the skin of grapes and in other plants, including peanuts and some berries.
The 55 resveratrol-treated obese mice were on a high-calorie diet — what one scientist called a "McDonald's diet." Not only were they about as healthy as normal mice, they were also as agile and active on exercise equipment as their lean cousins, demonstrating a normal quality of life that was unexpected for such obese creatures, said study co-author Rafael de Cabo of the Institute on Aging.
"These fat old mice can perform as well on this skill test as young lean mice," Sinclair said.
The only major body measurement that didn't improve — aside from weight — was cholesterol, and that didn't seem to matter in the overall health of the mice, Sinclair said.
The study is so promising that the aging institute this week is strongly considering a repeat of the same experiment with rhesus monkeys, a closer match to humans, said institute director Dr. Richard Hodes.
Hodes cautions that it's too early for people to start taking non-regulated resveratrol supplements because safety issues haven't been adequately addressed.
Sirtris Pharmaceuticals is working on a high-dose resveratrol pill that unlike unregulated supplements on the market now, would be used as a drug and require
Food and Drug Administration approval, said company chief executive officer Dr. Christoph Westphal. And that development and federal approval is about five years away, he said.
Sirtris is aiming the research at diseases of aging, which includes diabetes.
Sinclair's results are so promising that he rushed the study into the science journal while the obese mice are still alive, not waiting several more weeks or months until they die. That raises some issues, including specific figures about mortality, but is understandable, said outside experts. The obese mice still lived past the median age for mice of their weight.
Even would-be competitors are praising the study.
"It's a fairly spectacular result," said University of Wisconsin medical professor Dr. Richard Weindruch, who co-founded another biotech company that looks at the genetics of aging and drugs that could expand life spans. "People will go to McDonald's and afterwards they'll do super-sized resveratrol."
"This is fantastic," said Brown University molecular biology professor Stephen Helfand, who was the first reviewer for the journal Nature and not part of the team. "This is a historic landmark contribution."
Helfand said he won't be taking red wine extract supplements — but he has put his elderly parents on them. Such supplements are available at health food stores and on-line, but not at dose levels equivalent to what the mice in the experiment got — roughly equal to 100 bottles of wine a day in humans.
Mice, he said, are good initial test subjects for human drugs because their bodies function similarly to humans in many ways. However, the differences between mouse and man can prove crucial, he noted.
Sinclair said he takes resveratrol supplements, but doesn't recommend it for others.
Resveratrol works by spurring activity and regrowth in cells' mitochondria, which Sinclair called "the energy powerhouses of the cell."
Some scientists, such as Weindruch and Hodes, worry that the research may encourage people to forget about their diets and wait for a red wine cure-all that may never come.
"It's not an excuse to overeat," Sinclair said. But he added that for mice at least, this shows you can be "fat, happy, healthy and vigorous." |
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061102...t_fighting_wine |
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| Tordan |
| wish i could drink wine at work. i'd be a lot more productive, happier and healthier. |
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| English Rachel |
I went to see the Beautiful South last night and my friend Chris managed to blag us backstage...
We then sat in the pub (Red Lion) drinking with the band.
Paul Heaton is my hero. I love him.
But I am hammered still :(
And at work :(
So shove your happy coffee and wine messages! |
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| Skipper |
| Coffee is become a close runner up to wine as my favorite beverage. Is there anything it CAN'T do? |
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| EvilTree |
| quote: | Originally posted by Skipper
Coffee is become a close runner up to wine as my favorite beverage. Is there anything it CAN'T do? |
It still tastes like crap compared to a fine blend of tea :D |
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| starsearcher |
| quote: | Originally posted by EvilTree
It still tastes like crap compared to a fine blend of tea :D |
Tea is fantastic...but then again so is coffee...I guess one of the main ingredients in reality is caffeine and there's lots of that in tea as well :) |
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| locodawg |
| quote: | Originally posted by Tordan
wish i could drink wine at work. i'd be a lot more productive, happier and healthier. |
sometimes people at my work drink wine while working ... I refuse to take part in any of that though ... main because if some how money disappears or some random dude gets a cheque its my ass on the line |
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| *~LiSa-LoO~* |
| yay b/c cale thinks I have this! |
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| DigitalMP |
yesterday was my first day without coffee in weeks. miserable.
today was my first of the every-other-day cycle. |
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| riskytrader |
Hehe it's a good thing i'm a starbucks shareholder with these lovely articles coming out.
As an aside, I despise wine. Maybe I just haven't tried anything that suits my tastes. Can someone recommend a great red or white that I will absolutely love. |
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| StereoPrincess |
| unless it's sweetened. lol. |
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