# Coffee’s “Benefit” Has an Awkward Counterexample ## Метаданные - **Канал:** Physionic - **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5-Gjg1U58U ## Содержание ### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5-Gjg1U58U) Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) I enjoy my coffee and you'll be hardpressed to remove it from my screaming hands if this turns out to be bad news. You may feel the same way. There's a huge new study including over 100,000 people over an amazing 43 years that just released a few weeks ago and goes over the link between coffee and the risk of brain diseases classically called dementia. This study has an incredibly surprising finding from my perspective, especially considering what we know about coffee. Anyway, in some ways, I'm going to tell you some self-fulfilling great news, and in others, I'm going to disappoint you. There's a lot to like about this study. For example, the researchers continuously track coffee consumption every two to four years over the next four decades, which is one major reason that this study is so powerful. Now, when we look at the data, we see the risk of dementia on the vertical axis. Anything below that starting 1. 0 is considered reduced risk. Then the further right that we go, the more coffee consumed. Clearly, there's a relationship with reduced risk, which continues to indicate reduced risk from zero cups to about three cups of coffee with little additional benefit going beyond that. One cup is defined as 8 ounces or about 240 milliliters. The proposed reason for these benefits stem from many factors. One major one is the known way that caffeine molecule binds to particular types of receptors called adenosine receptors. Now, it's actually this receptor that is bound by, you guessed it, the adenosine molecule, which accumulates in our body as we go about our day. It's one of our sleep pressures. As adenosine rises and binds to the receptor on our brain cells, there's a biochemical signal that's transmitted into the neurons that promotes drowsiness. Anyway, that's a bit beside the point, but caffeine binds those same receptors and changes the signaling within the neurons, the brain cells. This change does two things. It makes brain cells more able to resist death caused by an accumulation of proteins like in Alzheimer's disease called beta amalloid. And secondly, it can also bind inflammatory cells called microglea and reduce their production of pro-inflammatory molecules, which also protects other brain cells like neurons from being overly damaged. Now, apparently there's also evidence that caffeine suppresses the activity of two key enzymes involved in producing beta amalloid called secretasis. Beta amalloid doesn't just appear in your brain one day. it's produced and it's generally found in the insoluble form on the membrane of your brain cells meaning it's integrated into the cell membrane. Then secretases interact with the base of the amaloid protein and snip it off creating a soluble version which can then aggregate and create long-term issues for cellto cell communication. A pretty important function if we're trying to think. Anyway, caffeine interferes with the activity of these enzymes that snip the insoluble amaloid protein. Oh, also caffeine seems to promote the inhibition of a key enzyme involved in Alzheimer's disease called GSK3. Now, if you've been following physionic for a time, I've mentioned that sucker a few times. In simple terms, more GSK3 activity translates to worse Alzheimer's disease progression. Now, I won't go into it further than that, but clearly caffeine and coffee has many mechanisms by which it can enact dementia prevention. There's a few other suggestions based on other studies done on caffeine, but the bottom line is this. Coffee reduces risk of dementia, and there are multiple caffeine related mechanisms that explain that risk reduction. I'll likely do a deeper dive on the mechanisms, but this study isn't designed to figure out those kinds of questions. Still, you might have noticed that I keep referencing caffeine. And that's not me trying to play slate of hand between the words caffeine and coffee. Check this out. We're again looking at dementia risk with lines going down indicating reduced dementia risk. I'm showing you the pool data, which means that the data based on most of the participants. The T1 stands for the lowest coffee consumers and T3 is the highest. The red shaded area is the uncertainty in the data. If it crosses the 1. 0 line, that means there's no statistically identified relationship. I'm sure you see it now that I've explained it. The T3 does not indicate a relationship. So, the more coffee consumed, no reduced risk of dementia. This flies in the face of the data that we just went over a bit ago, right? We saw that coffee reduced the risk of dementia, and now we don't. Well, that's where this focus on caffeine comes in because we're looking at decaffeinated coffee here. Exactly why this is the case is unclear. I mean, we even see a moderate amount of decaffeinated coffee does reduce the risk of dementia. So ### [5:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5-Gjg1U58U&t=300s) Segment 2 (05:00 - 09:00) why would more reverse that benefit? But the bad news doesn't end there. Before I touch on that, you might be interested to know if you're a tea drinker, how tea does against dementia or how coffee affects different forms of dementia or different preparations of coffee, sweetened or artificially sweetened, and their impact or other such details. If you're inclined, I cover all of that in my full analysis of the one that you're currently watching. It's part of my Physionic Insider membership. You also get a delivered article, shortened summary of the main takeaways, and as usual, all these perks right over here. If you're a health science nerd like me, the Physic Insiders is where to be. Check it out by using the link in the description. I hope to talk with you there. Now, back to the bad news. If we ask people questions related to their subjective sense of mental performance, we get some more troublesome results shown here. The purple is decaffeinated in this dis in this situation. The higher the bars go, the worse, meaning the greater subjective sense of cognitive decline. So either no relationship for caffeinated coffee or a reduced sense of cognitive impairment, but decaffeinated indicates a stronger sense of cognitive impairment. There were some of the same trends seen in objective measures of cognitive function as well, though the results weren't universal. So, what to make of these data? Well, the researchers argue that these worrying results for decaffeinated coffee may be an artifact of confounding, meaning people consuming decaffeinated coffee may have caffeine intolerances and underlying health concerns that predispose them to cognitive decline. Truthfully, this is just guesswork because the researchers did perform robust adjustments and still found this association. I also think that the assumption that tens of thousands of people are all suffering from a similar health issue that are not adjusted for and that forces them to consume decaffeinated coffee is a bit of a stretch in my mind. But maybe my caffeine saturated brain is deceiving me. I'd be open to this interpretation, but I would want to actually see data indicating that it's to be true. I currently remain skeptical. Still, we don't need to rely on this study. We can expand our view to other similar studies and see if these results remain true. For example, another huge though less robust analysis indicates similar striking differences between caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee. This analysis does not indicate harm of decaffeinated coffee, but it does confirm unique benefits of caffeinated coffee that are not seen in any measure of decaffeinated coffee. Unfortunately, there aren't any longerterm randomized control trials between caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee on cognitive outcomes. There's a few smaller short-term studies, and they seem to confirm that there may actually be differences between caffeinated and decaffeinated with caffeinated offering more potent benefits. That said, they also don't generally argue decaffeinated leads to worse outcomes. So, that was a lot. I realize I'll put it to you this way. The data for dementia indicates that there's robust protective effect of caffeinated coffee on average about an 18% reduced risk with more questions for decaffeinated coffee. I don't think that we should necessarily demonize deca decaffeinated coffee. Now, I'd say that the data leans more toward a null effect. This means that there may be some unique benefit of caffeinated coffee, assuming that you can tolerate it. I imagine you aren't just interested in your brain health, though, if I'm reading your face correctly. Obviously, I'm pretending because I'm looking at a camera, but pretend with me. If you're interested in other benefits of coffee, then check out this video right here. I go over heart health and more, but also how timing your coffee makes a big difference on your health. You won't want to miss it. I can feel it. Thanks for hanging out and I'll catch you in the next one. See you. --- *Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/41669*