Coffee

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Blue Frost
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Re: Coffee

Post: # 192763Unread post Blue Frost »

I think I read a few cups are good for you, but so is some alcohol, fruit juice, and water even.
I don't drink coffee.


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Gary Oak
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Re: Coffee

Post: # 192773Unread post Gary Oak »

I also am always on the lookout for reasons to drink coffee every morning.
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Re: Coffee

Post: # 192809Unread post Renee »

Gary Oak wrote: April 15th, 2018, 11:39 am Seeing as it is very painful to quit, I am always happy to hear of good things coffee does :pardon:

Coffee Causes Widespread Brain Entropy
and that's a good thing

Basic neuroscience teaches us how individual brain cells communicate with each other, like neighbours chatting over the garden fence. This is a vital part of brain function. Increasingly however neuroscientists are zooming out and studying the information processing that happens within and between neural networks across the entire brain, more akin to the complex flow of digital information constantly pulsing around the globe.

This has led them to realise the importance of what they call “brain entropy” – intense complexity and irregular variability in brain activity from one moment to the next, also marked by greater long-distance correlations in neural activity. Greater entropy, up to a point, is indicative of more information processing capacity, as opposed to low entropy – characterised by orderliness and repetition – which is seen when we are in a deep sleep or coma.

A new study in Scientific Reports is the first to examine whether and how ingesting a psychostimulant – in this case caffeine – affects brain entropy. The results show caffeine causes a widespread increase in cerebral entropy. This dose of neural anarchy is probably welcome, especially considered in light of another new paper, in PLOS One, which finds greater brain entropy correlates with higher verbal IQ and reasoning ability.


For the caffeine study, Da Chang at Hangzhou Normal University in China and other researchers scanned the brains of 60 participants – 30 men and women – at baseline, and also after they ingested a 200mg caffeine pill (roughly approximate to two cups of coffee). It was a “resting-state” scan meaning that the participants simply lay in the scanner doing nothing. For both scans, Chang’s team analysed changing neural activity levels from one moment to the next, and looked for correlations in activity across and within brain regions to calculate brain entropy. They also measured changes in cerebral blood flow across the brain.

The scans showed that caffeine increased brain entropy across nearly the entire cerebral cortex, but especially in “lateral prefrontal cortex, the DMN [default mode network, involving in day-dreaming and self-reflection], visual cortex, and motor network”, which the researchers linked to caffeine’s known beneficial effects on “attention, vigilance, and action/motion function.” There was little correlation locally between increased entropy and cerebral blood flow (which was reduced by caffeine), suggesting the effects of the caffeine were via influences on neuronal function, rather than due to vascular changes.

“Increased resting brain entropy indicates increased resting brain activity irregularity or complexity, suggesting an increase of information processing capacity in the resting brain,” the researchers said.

Meanwhile, a separate group led by Glenn Saxe at New York University’s School of Medicine used the same methods as Chang’s team to measure brain entropy in 900 healthy participants, who also completed measures of their verbal intelligence and reasoning ability outside of the scanner. The New York researchers defined brain entropy as “a measure of the brain’s overall flexibility or readiness to encounter unpredictable stimuli” and they found that it correlated with intelligence.

Specifically, superior vocabulary performance was associated with greater resting-state entropy in the left inferior frontal lobe, while superior reasoning ability was associated with greater entropy in that same region, but also in bilateral prefrontal areas.

Saxe and his colleagues said that “entropy in this context provides an indicator of the brain’s general readiness to process unpredictable stimuli from the environment” – a brain with greater entropy may in effect be better able to model and predict the outcomes of a complex, chaotic world. The researchers added, though, that they had not measured “the active use of brain states during a particular task”. Indeed, follow up research is now needed to see how brain entropy varies during performance of specific mental challenges, and how caffeine and other substances might affect entropy during such tasks.

In contrast to the entropy–intelligence association, participants’ age and years of education did not correlate with their IQ test scores. “These results suggest that entropy is a reliable predictor of intelligence, and provides unique information not captured by developmental status and educational status alone,” the researchers said.

The new findings add to past research measuring neural entropy that’s shown entropy is reduced in adults diagnosed with ADHD, for example, and in people addicted to cocaine. However, the story is not as simple as more entropy is good, less is bad. For instance, patients diagnosed with schizophrenia have greater neural entropy than healthy controls, perhaps indicative of “an underlying dysregulation of more complex functional networks”.

It will be interesting to see how the research on neural entropy develops in the future. For now, it is enough to marvel that as you enjoy your morning coffee, you are increasing the entropy throughout your brain – the bitter tonic is not merely waking you up, but apparently also boosting your brain’s useful anarchy, its complexity and information processing capacity.

—Caffeine Caused a Widespread Increase of Resting Brain Entropy

—Brain entropy and human intelligence: A resting-state fMRI study

Christian Jarrett (@Psych_Writer) is Editor of BPS Research Digest

https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/04/10/ca ... ood-thing/
First of all so called "studies" are not science. They are manipulations designed to indicate a certain outcome that benefits a particular entity, theory or stakeholder.

One thing that did jump out at me was this statement..."In contrast to the entropy–intelligence association, participants’ age and years of education did not correlate with their IQ test scores."

In other words...Education does not always equate to intelligence...Unfortunately this becomes more and more evident with each passing generation.
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Re: Coffee

Post: # 192821Unread post Gary Oak »

I’m studying ways to make me feel good about my caffeine addiction. :cofferoll: :coffee:
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Re: Coffee

Post: # 192826Unread post Twilight turtle »

Not a big coffee drinker... just a cup sometimes and a change from tea. Don't seem to be many hot drinks really other than hot choc, nice but full of sugar that. :kez:
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Re: Coffee

Post: # 192835Unread post Blue Frost »

I don't care for any hot drinks unless it's chicken noodle soup, or something with beef. :)
How Chocolate I have to have a ton of marshmallows.
I like cold teas, Sun tea is best with lemon in it. :)
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Re: Coffee

Post: # 192842Unread post Twilight turtle »

Oh yeah, I forgot about soup... on a cold winter's night.
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Re: Coffee

Post: # 192848Unread post Blue Frost »

When I make Chicken noodle soup, I add extra bullion, and less water so it's richer :yum2:
I eat the chicken, and noodles, and enjoy the soup as a drink.
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Re: Coffee

Post: # 193628Unread post Tribrid Vampire »

I have been having coffee daily. Tried not to but I'm always tired and sleepy. That kick only last for about 1.5 hours. I feel like coffee dehydrates your body.
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Re: Coffee

Post: # 193633Unread post Blue Frost »

It does dehydrate you, and that's why some drink it all day long.
I think coffee should be just a treat occasionally, but that's my opinion which means nothing.
I drink water first thing in the morning, and most the day, sometimes fruit juice, or teas.
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Re: Coffee

Post: # 193634Unread post Gary Oak »

I only drink coffee in the morning and then don’t touch caffein until the next morning.so I can get that morning wake up blast off for the day. It works but caffeine withdrawal is not enjoyable.
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Re: Coffee

Post: # 193673Unread post Blue Frost »

Well if you wanted to quit you can just cut back on the serving size each morning.
One cups is not bad though, and coffee does have a little good.
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Re: Coffee

Post: # 204209Unread post Gary Oak »

Hooray ! :coffee: here’s yet another reason to keep drinking coffee. Coffee has been proven to help prevent some cancers. https://www.sciencealert.com/drinking-c ... oming-back
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Re: Coffee

Post: # 204213Unread post Blue Frost »

Hope you don't use fluoridated water, totally negates the effect.
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