This is all about an issue of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease that's dedicated to "Therapeutic Opportunities for Caffeine in Alzheimer's Disease and Other Neurodegenerative Disorders".
This special issue arose from a meeting held in Lisbon, in July 2009, on "Caffeine and the Brain".
The meeting, and this special issue of the journal, were sponsored by the Associado Industrial e Comercial do Cafe: the Industrial and Commercial Coffee Association.
It is claimed that this organization "generously financed both the meeting and this special issue while leaving full scientific independence to all contributors". Even if that's perfectly true, I suggest that there might be just a teeny bit of selection bias in the papers in this issue of the journal.
[EDITED to add: of course there is no mention of the sponsorship in the PhysOrg article. Why is it that every single time I see a PhysOrg link on HN there's something rather wrong with it?]
Thanks for pointing that out - I did a cursory look for obvious industry connections and didn't see it. I should have looked harder!
It's important to be aware of where the money is coming from. That said, the journal is peer reviewed, and this sort of sponsorship is not uncommon for either journals or conferences. One would dismiss a wide swath of research if one concentrated more on funding sources than quality of data. (Not that you were doing that, just sayin'.)
Caffeine has always caused me to have a heightened level of anxiety that lasts much longer than initial high. My recommendation is that you should sleep when you are tired. I like to take a nap in my car during lunch.
Yeah, mild levels of caffeine (<200-300mg for me I'm guessing) give me a barely noticeable but consistent boost. Anything more and I avoid lethargy but i also sacrifice attention which has its own pros/cons including the ability to enjoy repetitive but boring work.
Agreed. I actually have found that the kind of high I get from caffeine greatly depends on the source it comes from.
For me, coffee is drastically inferior to the high I get from earl grey tea (most black teas in general). I find that with tea the high is much smoother and lasts longer; if you can imagine a bell curve, it would be wider and with a smaller amplitude, whereas coffee would be narrower and with a taller amplitude.
Also, I've found a 20 minute nap at mid-day with green tea afterwards (about half the caffeine content of my morning breakfast tea) to be much more effective in improving cognitive performance than to skip the nap and rely solely on caffeine. For the rest of the day I'm caffeine free.
Bumping for Earl Grey.
Also, niacin counteracts any mild anxiety from caffeine for me. Probably why its also found in red bull, drinkers having panic attacks on their massive amounts of caffeine would be bad for sales.
Its hard to know what to make of these studies that show how a substance that is harmful/poison might be good in the long run. Like wine and heart disease: Should we all really add a glass of red wine to our daily diet?
Few substances are innately and incontrovertibly harmful or helpful. Even water can be deadly if you drink enough, to say nothing of what happens if you just hold your face in it for a few minutes — are you surprised by studies showing that 2 liters of water a day are good for you too? Iron is very poisonous too, but it's widely known as an essential nutrient. Ditto for some vitamins.
I agree. The problem with these kind of studies is that they aren't coming up with explanations and then trying to test them; they're simply looking for correlations, which advances knowledge not one jot.
In the case of caffeine I suspect the main benefit is that drinkers of tea and coffee eat less food, and rich food damages the blood vessels of the brain (as it does to the heart).
In the case of alzheimer's, the benefit is most likely from the fact Caffeine is a stimulant that affects the acetylcholine system.
In that sense it is similar to nicotine, and NON-smokers are 50% more likely to develop alzheimer's (controlling for increased mortality).
One current alzheimer's medication is Galantamine ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galantamine ), which also increases acetylcholine levels and nicotinic acetylcholine receptor activity specifically.
Should we all really add a glass of red wine to our daily diet?
The problem with these questions is that their answers aren't absolute. It varies significantly depending on the person, their genetic makeup, and their lifestyle. Even doing seemingly healthy things can be bad depending on your makeup.. enough 20-30 year olds have died during moderate exercise to show us that.
There are enough old smokers, heavy drinkers, drug takers, and what not, to demonstrate that these activities are not guaranteed to kill you. Studies merely attempt to show, statistically, the damage that "can" be caused or is "more likely" to be caused than by not consuming the item.
Given that we're haven't worked out how to determine what substances are or aren't helpful to us on an individual basis, I consume whatever I like as long as it doesn't make me feel bad. I might die tomorrow, I might die when I'm 90, que sera sera.
You can find the whole issue online here: http://iospress.metapress.com/content/t13614762731/
This special issue arose from a meeting held in Lisbon, in July 2009, on "Caffeine and the Brain".
The meeting, and this special issue of the journal, were sponsored by the Associado Industrial e Comercial do Cafe: the Industrial and Commercial Coffee Association.
It is claimed that this organization "generously financed both the meeting and this special issue while leaving full scientific independence to all contributors". Even if that's perfectly true, I suggest that there might be just a teeny bit of selection bias in the papers in this issue of the journal.
[EDITED to add: of course there is no mention of the sponsorship in the PhysOrg article. Why is it that every single time I see a PhysOrg link on HN there's something rather wrong with it?]