Coffee boosts mental performance AND protection....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 9-5-2013

An email I get is from Medical News Today.

They list the key information from reports of recent health and medical research.

We already know that studies found  that coffee boosts mental performance and everyone knows who has ever had coffee knows it can help you wake up and be alert for a while soon after you drink it.  One writer said it takes effect in about 18 minutes.

And, previous studies have found that drinking 3 or more cups of coffee a day – either regular OR decaf helps prevent Alzheimer’s disease!

Last week Medical News Today had a story that the protective effects of coffee drunk 3 or more times a day include preventing prostate cancer.  (That likely means it helps prevent other cancers and cancers in women too.)  This protection has been credited to the high levels of antioxidants in coffee in the sources I’ve seen before.

This new study says drinking a LOT of coffee is protective but then has two cautions not to do it.

1.  There IS a drawback to drinking that much coffee; but both cautions they list are incorrect for most people. And they don't list the valid one!

2.  You CAN get the protection without drinking that much coffee.  

(See my comments below.)

High coffee intake may help against prostate cancer

http://mnt.to/a/4gvK

Consuming four or more cups of coffee a day could reduce the risk of prostate 

cancer recurrence and disease progression, according to a study published in the 

journal Cancer Causes and Control.

My comments:

Four cups a day of coffee can cause anxiety type symptoms and sleep disruption.  So, one or two or sometimes three cups a day is better for you. 

I personally think that two and sometimes three cups of coffee is best and if more wake up is needed than that:   taking a brief nap, or a few seconds or a couple minutes of brisk exercise, or several cups of tea or green tea plus the green coffee bean extract two times a day will do the job.  And, it will do it without then disrupting your sleep to make you start groggier than you otherwise would have.

Note that the green coffee bean extract now available and decaf coffee each have two of the 3 ingredients they say in this article that might be creating the protective effects.

With my reflux, even the two or three cups of coffee a WEEK I drink, I pay for with extra symptoms.

So, I'm glad I've been taking the green coffee bean extract twice a day for some time now.

I also get caffeine from tea, green tea, dark chocolate, and unsweetened cocoa!

(Coffee with those ingredients and other antioxidants is also tested as reducing the odds coffee drinkers will get Alzheimer's!)

2 points:

1.  Percolated coffee for sure and possibly espresso boost cholesterol.  Drip coffee which is easier to make and in far more common use does not! So this caution is not completely accurate.

2.  Stress boosts blood pressure reliably.  If that's happening already -- particularly if combined with no exercise, that much coffee can add to the effect a bit. Stress also may make feeling a bit anxious worse on 4 or more cups of regular coffee.

Otherwise, drinking this much coffee is rarely a problem with boosting blood pressure. So that caution is not accurate as stated either!

Also, the few potential health problems with coffee:  a compound called acrylamide, the chemicals used in growing coffee, and the solvents used in processing it may well be considerably less in the coffee and decaf from a company called Mt Hagen organic coffee and decaf. 

It’s organic and heated less so it has less acrylamide and has far less of a taste of processing chemicals than standard instant regular or decaf coffee. 

I found Mt Hagen decaf and regular instant coffee at Whole Foods when I was looking for a better tasting instant decaf for my wife and me.  It’s remarkably more mild and smooth and tastes less of processing chemicals than the kind we were using.  Then we found that their instant regular coffee was similarly better than the regular instant coffee my wife was drinking.

(Acrylamide is also produced by heating grains and potatoes & it’s thought to be mildly carcinogenic and harmful to the nerves.)  

Be sexier, less fat, and prevent prostate cancer....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 6-14-2012

There are a number of ways to do each one separately.

A.  First, here’s two ways to do each one -- all from that one method alone!

1.  Regular vigorous exercise on most days of every week causes or helps cause all 3 effects.  (You get the best results from doing both some strength training and some interval cardio each week.)

Such exercise causes your body to release growth hormone and testosterone. And, it slows aging and increases blood circulation.  It also lowers your stress levels and increases your ability to withstand stress. It lowers your risk of most cancers, particularly if you eat fruits and vegetables high in antioxidants and take antioxidant supplements too.)  People who do such exercise even early on develop better self-esteem.  They begin to be and stay more proactive and optimistic.  They feel sexier, they feel better, and they tend to look better and become nicer to be around.  That’s a great combination.

If you eat right, stop eating fattening foods, and do such exercise and add some sustainable calorie restriction AND do such exercise you can lose excess fat and keep it off.  Studies show people who do each of these lose enough fat they feel sexier.  Not only that, this combination is what people do who lose fat they keep off.  There are multiple ways that regular vigorous exercise is essential for doing this.  It isn’t sufficient if you fail to eat right; but it IS a key component that makes fat loss go faster, get better health results, and be sustainable enough you keep the fat off.

And, there are now studies showing that doing regular vigorous exercise helps prevent cancer directly.  (Such exercise slows aging which helps keep your immune system strong. And it causes your body to express genes that directly turn cancers off or slow them down.)

2.  From the vitamin D Council email newsletter recently I got this:

“Prostate cancer is the most common cause of death from cancer among men over the age of 75. And, prostate cancer has been one of the most researched topics in vitamin D! Researchers were initially interested in the two when they observed that sun exposure decreases the risk of prostate cancer.

But since then, research has come along much further. Just this past year, a team of doctors discovered that 4,000 IU/day helped men with low-risk prostate cancer, lowering their Gleason score and number of “positive cores.”

….Finally, vitamin D boosts testosterone levels! In a randomized controlled trial, 3,300 IU/day of vitamin D increased testosterone levels by 30-40%. In men, testosterone is important for reproduction tissues like the testis and prostate, and it's also important for key masculine features like increased muscle, bone mass, and the growth of body hair.”

So, that means that if you get regular vigorous exercise, eat antioxidant foods and take antioxidant supplements, AND take 3,000 to 5,000 iu of vitamin D3, your testosterone will be higher AND your risk of prostate cancer will be significantly less. 

You get all 3 effects.  Your libido will be higher.  More of you will be lean weight as strong bones and strong muscles. And, any weight loss you do will be mostly to all fat and the fat you take off will likely stay off.  And, you get two kinds of cancer and prostate cancer protection from both the exercise and the vitamin D3.

B.  Other ways to do these three things:

1.  Some other ways to boost testosterone include taking a supplement called tribulus.

It also helps if your level of “free” or bioavailable testosterone is high.  It seems that eating raw cruciferous vegetables prevents pollutants that mimic estrogen from lowering your free testosterone. So your effective testosterone goes up.  But separate studies show that eating raw cruciferous vegetables prevents cancer.  And eating raw cauliflower or broccoli florets each week or several times a week cuts your risk of the aggressive form of prostate cancer in HALF!

In addition, eating such vegetables helps you feel full, get the anticancer effect, get several other kinds of nutrition including the antioxidant vitamin C.  And, it does all this with close to zero calories.  And that means that eating such vegetables makes fat loss easier and easier to sustain so the fat stays off!

2.  Stopping as close to all intake of both regular and diet soft drinks and refined grain foods and high fructose corn syrup and artificial sweeteners and oils high in omega 6 and all oils that have been hydrogenated is big key to fat loss. Cutting back excessive sugar intake also helps.   You become LESS hungry.  You waste far fewer of the calories you take in, so you can eat MORE of the foods that protect your health and keep you well and still lose fat and keep it off.

Instead, eat a version you like of the DASH II diet or the Mediterranean diet with some extra nonstarchy vegetables and health OK protein foods.

The regular vigorous exercise and the increased testosterone increase muscle mass which burns at least 3 times the calories that the same weight of fat burns.  AND a recent study found that extra testosterone also removed belly fat!

3.  Besides these things from the regular vigorous exercise to the optimum intake of vitamin D3 to the raw cruciferous vegetables, there are several other ways to prevent cancer and most kinds of cancer.

Avoid tobacco smoke and tobacco products you put in your mouth!  Thirty per cent or more of ALL cancers are caused by smoke and/or tobacco products you put in your mouth.  That’s a huge chunk right off the top.

Smoke from a hot flame has several kinds of cancer creating compounds and most people today use lighters which have this effect.  Many of those compounds are also in cooler smoke. But recently news came out that tobacco also contains a radioactive element, polonium, so if you breathe tobacco smoke or put tobacco in your mouth or nose, that gets into your blood stream which goes everywhere in your body.  This can cause cancer anywhere in your body and too often it does. 

Avoid the tobacco smoke and tobacco products and you avoid all that!

Another key way to prevent cancers that has been proven to work is to either eat foods with curry spice that contains turmeric and black pepper or take curcumin from turmeric supplements along with a bit of black pepper once a day.  (I do both.)

The neat thing if you do this is you get four bonus health effects!  Your LDL cholesterol goes down.  Your level of chronic inflammation goes down.  So your heart health protection is better. And it also prevents Alzheimer’s disease! 

In summary, it IS quite doable to be sexier, less fat, and much less likely to get prostate cancer or any other cancer.

Now you know some of the methods that do this.