Oh For a Cup of Coffee.... Wait... What Did I Want?

My brother will probably rib me for no end for today's topic. He claims that when I'm in need of a topic for a blog, I fall back on coffee or Starbucks as a stand-by topic. While that may be true at some deeper level that I don't quite realize, part of the appeal comes from the fact that so many studies on coffee are coming out these days that if you wait long enough, the answer you want to hear will come to you. Case in point, the most recent study released on the effects of coffee have found that in women over the age of 65, three cups of coffee a day helps maintain memory levels. What was also determined was that similar effects were not found to result in men. So you see? We men are genetically pre-disposed to have shorter memories to begin with. We don't forget important things on purpose! It's our brains that betray us.

I find it fascinating that so many new studies on a single subject can yield such a wide variety of results. When I was in college I took courses in statistics and what I slowly realized is that while you can get some good results based on your sample size, it was also quite easy to manipulate the results to get the answer that you want. In this case, the study concludes that three cups of coffee helped women maintain their memory levels. If out of ten women only seven yield this result then you can say you have a 70% probability of this being the case in larger sample sizes, but supposing you want to make the result more credible. Throw out a few of the responses that don't fit into your intended result and you'll get the answer you're looking for.

Studies of this sort are going on all the time and there are so many different results each time that it becomes hard to figure out what we should do. A few months ago a study concluded that more than two cups of coffee a day would promote other ailments such as caffeine overload or perhaps heart palpitations. Okay so now the choice is clear. Either suffer from heart problems or forget about them by not drinking the required three cups of coffee a day. For those in the pro-coffee camp, it will be like a justification of their lifestyle. At the office we will proudly congregate around the coffee pot and sing our praises for being smart and healthwise. Of course we will grumble just as loudly when several months later, we end up reading about how coffee slowly erodes the lining of the stomach.

I have long believed that anything in moderation can never be bad for you. Three cups of coffee during the day? That's not a bad amount I suppose. I usually have two these days. One in the morning and one in the afternoon. While the caffeine really doesn't do much for me other than give me something to sip on as I work, it's something that I have come to enjoy. I suppose if coffee is the only form of liquid diet I had during the day the results wouldn't be so good. So I try to balance that with the amount of water I intake during the day too. If you favor one over the other it's more than likely that you will be one of the statistics that researchers will use to point to the negative effects of coffee.

I mean coffee is one of those substances, just like cola, that is either considered a blessing or a curse depending on who you ask and who is funding the research. Cola is known to be a useful cleaning agent. It can help clear oil stains when poured on driveways and it also is a good source of caffeine for those who need it. So if it is cleaning oil stains from concrete, just imagine what it's doing to your intestines. Not so pleasant is it? Coffee will continue to be in the spotlight for these types of questions for a long while. With the recent news that Starbucks would be raising prices, perhaps they sponsored this study to entice more people to drink coffee as a memory aid. Perhaps if McDonald's withdraws their iced coffee from their restaurants then we'll see a study that says that iced coffee drinks are bad for the liver and so should not be consumed. Whatever it is, we will likely continue seeing fluctuations in the studies so long as people continue to drink it. Speaking of which... I think I'll go grab a cup now. Wait... a cup of what? I don't remember.