Very good news about coffee....Today's post:  Tuesday, 8-21-2018

Maybe you saw some of the research that coffee drinkers were less likely to get diabetes. 

Maybe you saw some of the research that said that coffee drinkers were less likely to get Alzheimer’s disease.

Initially this was thought to be because coffee is surprisingly high in antioxidants.  That may be so to some degree.

1.  But what if there was another much stronger reason for these good results?

I found out today there IS one.

The very good news is that drinking coffee is also good for your heart as well and will help you live longer too!

Most importantly, we now know the reason why this is so!

Your mitochondria are the energy centers in every cell in your body. 

They literally power your good health if you have plenty of them working well.  But if they are damaged or die off so does your health and eventually you!

It seems that coffee use causes your mitochondria to stay healthy and we have research that shows how that happens.

Dr Al Sears sent this in his email today:

“ “Researchers from Germany showed that caffeine can improve heart function in older people in just 10 days. The caffeine transformed old hearts into younger adult hearts.1

You might think that caffeine works by stimulating the heart, the same way it stimulates your brain and energy.

But it actually works deep down at the cellular level to protect and repair the heart muscle.

The researchers found that mitochondria in the heart need a protein called p27.

You know by now that mitochondria are the tiny power plants that fuel every cell in your body. They turn nutrients into fuel. Each of your heart muscle cells has 5,000 of these energy generators. They keep your heart strong, young and energetic.

When the caffeine moved the p27 protein into the mitochondria, it protected heart muscle cells from death and damage. It helped repair the heart muscle after a heart attack. And it improved the function of endothelial cells that line the interior of blood vessels.

All of this helps explain why population studies find that older people with a coffee habit have a reduced risk of death from heart disease.2

One study from Brazil found that people drinking just three cups of coffee a day reduced calcification or hardening of their coronary artery by an amazing 67%!3

Other studies link coffee drinking with lower death rates from type 2 diabetes, respiratory disease and stroke.

Coffee can also slash the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s by 65%.4”

It is true that drinking more than 3 cups of coffee a day can keep you awake at night.  And, drinking two or three cups before 2 PM and stopping does this much less.

But drinking those two or three cups of coffee besides making you mentally sharper and more productive too by actual tests, it has this wonderful health benefit too!

Note that it’s likely best for you to drink organically grown coffee and make it using the drip method. 

However you fix your coffee, this research is great news!

2.  Are there things that harm your mitochondria?  

After all, if they are that valuable to keep healthy, you’d want to avoid them. 

Besides aging, the two biggest causes of damage to the mitochondria are being totally sedentary and taking statin drugs.

Even a brief walk a few days a week is protective of your mitochondria.  And, there is evidence that effective strength training and short but intense cardio when done most days of every week grow new mitochondria and keep the ones you have healthy. 

This is actually proven by research already done.  Regular exercisers live up to decades longer and stay healthy more of those years than people who do no exercise at all!

Being totally sedentary instead allows your mitochondria to die off and become less effective.

Statin drugs harm your mitochondria and are not very good at preventing heart attacks.

This is so much so that anyone who wants a healthy heart and to not get heart attacks or diabetes or heart failure should never take them.

We just did a longer post on that you can read:

Very bad news about statins....Tuesday, 8-7-2018

3.  If helping your body have healthy mitochondria is that valuable, is there anything else besides exercise that helps you to have enough of them and have them be healthy?

There are several supplements that do this.

Your body keeps your mitochondria healthy with the ubiquinol form of CoQ10 that your body actually uses.

When most people are younger their bodies provide ubiquinol when they eat enough good quality protein and vitamins and minerals. Once you pass age 25 or so that happens less and after 45 or 50 it drops off a lot.

But you can take 100 mg of ubiquinol as a supplement once to three times a day depending on how old you are.

Taking the supplement PQQ is thought to cause your body to make new mitochondria and remove senescent ones and help slightly damage mitochondria recover.

Taking 500 mg a day of quercetin and 500 mg a day of NAC, n-acetyl-cysteine protects your mitochondria.  This protective action can help you survive serious illness; and you can recover from colds and flu faster because your mitochondria are less damaged by the cold or flu.

Taking 500 mg once to three times a day of l-carnitine helps your body use ubiquinol to keep your mitochondria healthy.

Taking all these can help.  But except for taking NAC in cold and flu season, taking ubiquinol and exercise are the two most important ones.