• Coffee helps you see the bright side

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    By Meghan Holohan

    For some people, it’s somewhere between the third or fourth cup of coffee when they begin feeling human. While people commonly guzzle a cup of joe to perk up, it turns out caffeine can do more than simply wake people. Researchers found that caffeine helps the brain process positive words faster. 

    Caffeine indirectly boosts dopamine transmission—a neurotransmitter that aids in reward-based learning—and Lars Kuchinke, a junior professor at Germany's Ruhr University, suspected this might lead to better acumen with word recognition by enhancing activity in the brain’s left hemisphere, which controls language. Researchers already know that people who consume normal levels of caffeine perform better at basic cognitive tasks.  

    To discern whether a link existed between dopamine and word recognition, Kuchinke asked 66 people to participate in a word test. Thirty minutes prior to the study, half of the participants took a pill, containing about 200 milligrams of caffeine, which equals two or three cups of coffee. The other half ingested a placebo. Then the participants watched a string of letters pop up on a computer screen and quickly had to decide whether each was an actual word or not. Researchers have long known that most people have a natural tendency to recognize positive words faster than neutral or negative words.

    “Either positive words are better interconnected in the brain and it is, therefore, easier to recognize them or [the brain] receive[s] some kind of 'positive' or rewarding feedback during this process,” says Kuchinke. He also theorizes that negative words might cause the brain to pause, balking at the negative association, meaning a person would not identify it as quickly. 

    The caffeinated subjects correctly selected more positive words than the people in the control group. Kuchinke theorizes that when caffeine is added to the body it regulates the dopamine transmission in the regions that control decision-making and word comprehension.  

     “Caffeine may either strengthen connections to regions where positive information and positive feedback are processed so this information is more easily available during the process of word recognition,” he explains. “Or caffeine may simply facilitate the decision process.”

    He believes that caffeine specifically impacts the striatum in the basal ganglia, which helps us process positive words and make decisions. But his findings also indicate that dopamine aids in language comprehension.

    The findings were published online this month in the journal PLOS One. 

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  • Job a (literal) pain in the neck? Down some coffee

    By MyHealthNewsDaily staff

    If your job is a literal pain in the neck, drinking coffee may help, a new study from Norway says.

    People who drank coffee before sitting down to work at a computer for 90 minutes reported less pain in their necks and shoulders than those who didn't drink coffee, according to the study. Some in the study had previously suffered chronic neck and shoulder pain, while other participants hadn't — but people in both groups who drank coffee reported less pain, the researchers said.

    Among people whose daily work involves low levels of muscle activity, such as sitting at a computer all day, about 10 percent report shoulder and neck pain, according to the study.

    The researchers looked at 48 people, including 22 with chronic neck or shoulder pain, and 26 healthy people. The experiment was part of research on how pain develops during office work; it was not  intended to look at the effects of caffeine, the researchers said.

    People in the study reported to the laboratory first thing in the morning, so to offset any effects of sleepiness, coffee and tea were available. Nineteen of the study participants chose to drink coffee, but were instructed not to drink more than one cup. 

    Then, for 90 minutes, participants performed a computer task, using only a mouse.

    Researchers found that people who drank coffee — whether they had previous chronic pain or not — developed less pain over the course of the 90 minutes, compared with those who didn't drink coffee. And at the end of the computer task, the coffee drinkers rated their pain as less intense than the other study participants. 

    It's possible the reduction in pain experienced by coffee drinkers in the study was due to other traits or lifestyle behaviors common to people in this group. Future studies should be conducted in which participants are randomly assigned to consume caffeine or not in order to better understand whether the caffeine itself is truly reducing pain, the researchers said.

    The study, conducted by researchers at the Sunnaas Rehabilitation Hospital in Norway, was published Sept. 3 in the journal BMC Research Notes.

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  • Why room-temperature coffee tastes so bad

    By Natalie Wolchover
    LifesLittleMysteries

    "My coffee has become tepid." To a coffee drinker, is there any realization more sigh-inducing?

    It is strange, when you think about it, that a piping hot cup o' joe can be so delicious, and that iced coffee can be very nice, too, but that between those temperature extremes there lies an unpleasant no-man's-land of bitterness. Room-temperature coffee is regularly tolerated by us all — ok, us "addicts" — because we can't function without the caffeine. But why does it taste so bad?

    Biologists have only recently started getting a handle on how and why temperature affects the taste of food and beverages, and no research has been conducted specifically regarding coffee. But there are three main theories; the first holds that lukewarm coffee tastes bad because cavemen  didn't have refrigerators. Allow us to explain.

    Karel Talavera of the Laboratory of Ion Channel Research in Cuba has studied the way that taste receptors inside our taste buds respond to molecules at different temperatures. He and his colleagues have found that certain taste receptors are most sensitive to food molecules that are in the 20 to 35 degree Celsius (68 to 95 degree Fahrenheit) range — in other words, molecules that are at or just above room temperature. The taste receptors in question don't always register molecules that are much hotter or colder than this range, and thus we don't taste them.

    "This is still an obscure phenomenon that we cannot explain, but that could fit to the fact that taste perception does decrease above a certain temperature," Talavera told Life's Little Mysteries. In short, hot coffee (around 170 degrees F) may seem less bitter than room-temperature coffee (73 degree F) because our bitter taste receptors aren't as sensitive to bitter molecules in the coffee when those molecules are hot. [ Coffee's Mysterious Benefits Mount ]

    What does that have to do with cavemen? According to Talavera, biological processes such as our sensory systems tend to be designed by evolution to perform most effectively at the temperatures we are typically exposed to. "Our ancestors did not eat food at extreme temperatures," he said. Their meals consisted of mostly foraged berries and freshly hunted meat in the 20 to 37 degree Celsius range — almost exactly the window in which our taste buds are most sensitive. Because piping hot or ice-cold coffee falls outside this realm of maximum taste, our taste buds don't sense the drink's true bitterness.

    However, the temperature-dependence effect observed by Talavera and colleagues is more pronounced for sweet taste receptors than bitter ones, and so it may not be the only factor at work. Some researchers think tepid coffee's bitterness has more to do with smell than taste. "Odors influence coffee flavor very strongly, and it is easy to go from sublime to horrible," Paul Breslin, an experimental psychologist who studies taste perception at Rutgers University, wrote in an email. Even very bitter coffee, such as espresso, tastes great when hot because of its pleasant aroma, he pointed out.

    And according to Barry Green, a taste perception scientist at Yale University, hot coffee releases more aromatic compounds than room-temperature coffee, so it has a greater chance of impacting taste. He also said that milk, coffee's frequent companion, tastes worse at room temperature, and a combination of these factors probably explains the nearly universal opinion that lukewarm java leaves something to be desired. 

    One last theory holds that hot coffee's heat could be distracting us from its strong flavor. As Breslin put it, "It is possible that an attentional mechanism is at work. You do not think about how bitter or sweet [coffee] is when it is hot or cold. Hot coffee may force you to think about temperature, which is a bit of a distraction from its bitterness."

    None of the researchers profess to fully understand coffee's temperature-dependent deliciousness, but it seems to be at least slightly a matter of opinion. In a small survey of 42 people by Life's Little Mysteries, 79 percent said they like hot coffee best, while 19 percent prefer iced coffee. Though one survey respondent said she would "rather eat glass" than drink room-temperature coffee, another person actually reported liking lukewarm coffee best of all.

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  • Coffee buzz may be all in your head

    Phil Noble / Reuters

    By Rita Rubin

    If you’re one of those people who can’t start the day without a jolt of java, the mere thought of decaf is probably enough to put you to sleep.

    But a new study suggests you really needn’t worry that your favorite breakfast hangout one day will accidentally put decaf in the caffeinated carafe. As long as you think you’re getting the high-octane stuff, you’re likely to respond accordingly. You’ll feel happier and mentally sharper, the same as if you’d actually downed a dose of liquid lightning.

    In other words, caffeine is in the mind of the drinker -- not necessarily his or her cup.

    To investigate the power of this placebo effect in coffee drinkers, University of London researchers enlisted the help of 88 students, ages 18 to 47, who drank at least a couple of cups of caffeinated coffee a day. The scientists told the students only that they were studying the effects of caffeine on mood and brainpower.

    The students were divided into four groups, each consisting of 11 men and 11 women.

    People in two of the groups were given a cup of caffeinated coffee to drink, although one of those groups was told their coffee was decaf. 

    People in the other two groups were given a cup of decaf, although the researchers told one group that they were getting caffeinated coffee.

    The students drank their coffee in five minutes and then chilled for 55 before taking tests to evaluate mood and brainpower.

    You know where this is going. Turns out that both drinking caffeine and the mere belief that they had drunk caffeine improved the students’ attention and the speed at which they could perform a card-sorting task, a measure of psychomotor function.

    In addition, while students in all four groups reported feeling more depressed over the course of the testing, those who drank or thought they drank caffeine didn’t feel as glum as the others.

    Expecting to drink caffeine and actually drinking caffeine did not have a synergistic effect, though, as some previous research has found.

    Now, the scientists, who published their findings in the journal Appetite, aren’t suggesting that you could stroll into Starbucks and order a decaf espresso and feel the same lift you get from your regular caffeine fix. See, the placebo effect doesn’t work if you’re onto it.

    But if your partner’s caffeine intake is keeping him or her up at night, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to secretly do the old switcheroo at home. Just make sure you dispose of the bag or jar or whatever your coffee comes in.

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  • Coffee buzz protects brain from Alzheimer's

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    Your coffee habit may be helping to protect your brain.

    By Linda Carroll

    For years we’ve been told that caffeinated coffee was bad for us. It’s unhealthy and addictive, doctors warned. But as vindication for all who stuck by their energizing elixir, a new study shows that guzzling caffeinated coffee may actually be good for our brains. In fact, it may help keep Alzheimer’s at bay.

    The study, which was published early online in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, was in mice whose DNA had been tweaked to contain a human Alzheimer’s gene. Just like humans with familial Alzheimer’s, these mice become increasingly forgetful as they age.

    Amazingly, the equivalent of four to five cups of caffeinated coffee every few days led to much improved memories in the Alzheimer’s mice, says study co-author Gary Arendash, a scientist at the Florida Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center in Tampa.

    Earlier research by Arendash and his colleagues showed that caffeine could at least partially block the production of beta amyloid, the sticky protein that clogs the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. They also found that a substance called granulocyte-colony stimulating factor, or GCSF, sparked the production of new axons, the communication cables that link nerve cells together, as well as new nerve cells themselves.

    What’s really interesting is that caffeinated coffee -- but not decaf -- boosted the production of GCSF. 

    For the new study, Arendash and his colleagues “treated” healthy mice and Alzheimer’s mice with either caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee. Then the researchers ran a test to see if either beverage led to better memories.

    The test they used mimics one that is given to humans to diagnose Alzheimer’s. In that test, people are given a bag of objects to look through (we’ll call that Bag A). And then they’re shown another bag of objects (Bag B). Later on, they’re asked to remember what was in Bag A.

    Studies have shown that people with Alzheimer’s have a tough time remembering what was in Bag A because the distraction of looking through the objects from Bag B gets in the way of storing the contents of A in their long term memories. That’s generally not a problem for people with healthy brains.

    The two part mouse test involved water mazes. The mice has to find -- and remember -- the location of a submerged platform in a tub of water that is deep enough that they need to swim till they find the platform.

    After they find the platform in one tub, they’re moved to another tub where they have to find yet another platform. Mice with Alzheimer’s generally have a tough time remembering the location of the first platform when they’re placed in the original tub. But in Arendash’s study, Alzheimer’s mice that got caffeinated coffee had memories that were just as good as those of normal mice.

    Lest you dismiss this study because it’s just in rodents, Arendash says he’s got new data in humans. That data is still being analyzed, he says, but so far it looks like caffeinated coffee has the same impact in people as it does in mice.

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  • Too much coffee makes you hear voices, study suggests

    PHIL NOBLE / Reuters

    Coffee makes you hear voices that aren't there. Wait, who said that?!

    By Melissa Dahl, NBC News

    If you're hearing voices in your head, you may want to cut back on the caffeine. A recent Australian study showed a link between heavy coffee consumption, stress -- and auditory hallucinations. 

    Here's what happened: The volunteers listened to white noise played through a computer's headphones for three minutes. Every time they heard even a snippet of Bing Crosby's White Christmas, they were told to press a hand tally counter. (They weren't aware of the real point of the study -- they were told it was about auditory perception.)

    The song was never played. But the participants who said they were very stressed, and very caffeinated -- those who regularly drank five or more cups per day, at 200 milligrams of caffeine each -- were more likely to imagine they'd heard it.

    "We believe that high stress, in addition to taking high levels of caffeine, makes people yet more stressed and thus makes them more likely to 'overreact' to the environment -- i.e., to hear things that just aren’t there," explains Simon Crowe, the lead author of the study and a neuroscientist at Australia's La Trobe University, located in Bundoora, Victoria. The report was published in the April issue of the journal Personality and Individual Differences

    It's worth noting here that there are some limitations to the study: The levels of stress and caffeine consumption were both self-reported by the 92 volunteers who participated in the experiment. And what if, somehow, the caffeine-stressball combo made participants more eager to try to please the researchers -- yes, of course we heard the song! It's lovely, isn't it?! 

    Then again, maybe that's just what the voices in my head are telling me. 

    How much caffeine do you consume each day? 

    Follow Melissa Dahl on Twitter: @melissadahl.

     

     

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