Good for Me? Bad For Me? Decide Already!

If one is approaching middle age and is male, there are certain conditions he hopes to avoid: of course, the embarrassing ED is one of them but hardly the most serious. If one is to believe the television commercials, most of us will be affected by the horrifying condition that develops as the prostate glad enlarges, creating a myriad of problems, not the least of which is the constant urgency to urinate. Of course the real issue is not so much that it is a constant need which interrupts biking and canoeing trips, baseball games and meetings (to cite the TV ads) but the fact that the need is IMMEDIATE, as in "If I don't get to the bathroom in the next 20 seconds, it will be embarrassing." Well, yeah, I can see how that might be problematic. One thing doctors seem to suggest with frequency is that men limit the intake of caffeine. I understand the diuretic nature of caffeine, and we have, as a nation, decried young people's fixation on soda, energy drinks and all sorts of caffeine-laced beverages. Turns out that we might have been wrong.
Dr. Gary Arendash of the University of Florida recently conducted a study on the benefits of caffeine as a method to REVERSE the effects of Alzheimer's Disease. Seriously. According to a report in the BBC, Dr. Arendash's study was conducted using 55 mice who had been specifically bred to have the issues with memory that are similar to Alzheimer's patients at age 70.
Half the group was given caffeine in its water while the other half continued with plain water. The serving of caffeine amounted to the quivalent of 500 milligrams of caffeine (roughly 2 lattes from Starbucks, 14 cups of tea or 20 soft drinks...eek!) After two months, the mice on caffeine not only failed to get worse, their memory improved markedly while the mice getting only water continued to deteriorate with regard to memory functions. Caffeine is thought to have been responsible for a 50% drop in the levels of beta amyloid protein which forms destructive lumps in the brains of Alzheimer's patients.
In a related study, younger mice that were fed caffeine failed to develop the memory problems associated with older mice in the study...no word whether they were also subjected to MTV programming or text messaging.
Yes, I get the fact that it was mice, and we're men not mice, but a protein is a protein...I think. Obviously testing must be done with human patients before anyone can rush to judgment on this.
All I know is that coffee makes me go to the bathroom far more often than I want to and there are elements in soda that will positively do me in. Still...a good memory will enable me to remember which of my kids was nice to me when they all put me in the home!
Drink up!