Benefits of coffee

I'm not going to give any commentary, except to say that dozens of more papers could be cited, including many cases of multiple replications of the same findings.


Ross GW. et al (2000). Association of Coffee and Caffeine Intake With the Risk of Parkinson Disease. Journal of the American Medical Association, volume 283, issue 20, pages 2674-2679. Excerpt: "Our findings indicate that higher coffee and caffeine intake is associated with a significantly lower incidence of PD. This effect appears to be independent of smoking. The data suggest that the mechanism is related to caffeine intake and not to other nutrients contained in coffee."

Arendash GW, Cao C. (2010) Caffeine and coffee as therapeutics against Alzheimer's disease. Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, vol 20, pages 117-126. Excerpt: "Epidemiologic studies have increasingly suggested that caffeine/coffee could be an effective therapeutic against Alzheimer's disease [...] Caffeine appears to provide its disease-modifying effects through multiple mechanisms, including a direct reduction of Abeta production through suppression of both beta- and gamma-secretase levels. These results indicate a surprising ability of moderate caffeine intake (the human equivalent of 500 mg caffeine or 5 cups of coffee per day) to protect against or treat AD in a mouse model for the disease and a therapeutic potential for caffeine against AD in humans."

Brothers HM et al. (2010)  Caffeine attenuates lipopolysaccharide-induced neuroinflammation. Neuroscience Letters, volume 480, issue 2, pages 97-100. Excerpt: "Caffeine attenuated the number of activated microglia within the hippocampus of animals with LPS-induced and age-related inflammation."

Wang et al (2013).  Dietary polyphenols and colorectal cancer risk: The Fukuoka colorectal cancer study. World Journal of Gastroenterology, vol 19, issue 17, pages 2683–2690. Excerpt:  "The present findings suggest a decreased risk of colorectal cancer associated with coffee consumption." Entire paper free here.

Espinosa J et al. (2013) Caffeine consumption prevents memory impairment,‭ ‬neuronal damage,‭ ‬and adenosine A2A receptors upregulation in the hippocampus of a rat model of sporadic dementia. Journal of Alzheimer's Disease (JAD), vol 34, issue, 2, pages 509-518. Excerpt: "Caffeine consumption (1 g/L in the drinking water starting 2 weeks before the STZ challenge) prevented the STZ-induced memory impairment and neurodegeneration". 

Lucas et al.  Coffee, caffeine, and risk of completed suicide: results from 3 prospective cohorts of American adults. The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry, volume 15, issue 5. Excerpt: "In these three large prospective cohorts of U.S. men and women, we observed that suicide risk, which was similar to that reported in age- and gender-specific U.S. mortality statistics (Rockett et al. 2010), decreased in a dose-dependent manner with increasing consumption of coffee. As compared with non-coffee drinkers, the pooled multivariate RR of suicide was 45% lower among individuals who consumed 2–3 cups of coffee per day, and 53% lower among individual consuming ≥4 cups of coffee per day. The lack of association between decaffeinated coffee and suicide risk suggests that caffeine, rather than other coffee components, contributes to this association." Entire paper free here.


Fujii et al (2015). Ingestion of coffee polyphenols increases postprandial release of the active glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1(7-36)) amide in C57BL/6J mice. Journal of Nutritional Science. Excerpt: "We conclude that dietary coffee polyphenols augment gut-derived active GLP-1 secretion via the cAMP-dependent pathway, which may contribute to the reduced risk of type 2 diabetes associated with daily coffee consumption."
Full paper available for free here.

"that's so gay"

[This is something I posted on Facebook in response to something rather insensitive]

“Gay” is a sexual orientation and not a synonym for “lame” or “stupid” or [insert negative word]. Yes, language has its own evolution and words change meaning over time. But the vast majority of contemporary homosexuals identify as “gay”. Moreover, “gay” and “homosexual” are used interchangeably in most (or at least many) psychology and sociology textbooks. Stop being so mentally lazy and put some thought into what you’re saying. If you’re a morally decent person, then you would be upset if somebody used races (“Hispanic” or “African” or “Caucasian”) as synonyms for “lame/stupid”. Obviously sexual orientation and race are separate, but my point is that they’re both innate, part of a person’s identity, and beyond the person’s power to change (don’t get me started on “sexual reorientation therapy”; it doesn’t work and is often very harmful). If you use “gay” as an insult around me after I ask you to stop doing that, then I’m not going to associate with you or talk to you. It’s disrespectful and makes you look like a jackass. Stop it.

 The fact that “gay” didn’t originally mean homosexual doesn’t make it any less disrespectful (and doesn’t make me any less irritated) when people now use “gay” as an insult. Why? Because people who comprise a relatively large percentage of the population use the word to describe an important and innate aspect of who they are and everybody who goes through public school learns that “gay” is used that way when they take sex ed in high school (or even junior high in many cases). It’s how the word is used in most textbooks that touch on the subject (including those used by religious institutions!), it’s how the word is used by both of the APAs (American Psychiatric Association and American Psychological Association), etc.

Apart from being annoyed, I’m also fascinated by the fact that some people so stubbornly cling to “gay” as an insult even after all facing all of these points-- If people want to describe something as “lame” or “stupid”, why don’t they just use those words?? That in itself is worthy of psychological research IMO. Let’s say that I tell X, “it offends/upsets me when you use the word in that way, so could you please not do that around me?” It ought to be easy for a well-adjusted and morally decent person to sympathize wth my perspective to the point where they don’t use the word that way when they’re around me. But let’s suppose that X replies by saying, “nah, I’m gonna keep using the word in the same way around you”. Why is that? I would say that X seems to have some issues he/she should work on. Even if X doesn’t have any issues, he/she would still be an unpleasant person that at least I wouldn’t want to be around.

I'm often quite critical of popular atheist authors, but today I feel like giving a shout out to Sam Harris, who has said (in different forms aloud and in print):

The larger issue is dogmatism. The larger issue is belief without evidence; belief that is intrinsically divisive because it is immune to criticism – beliefs that divide us into separate moral communities where we have Christians against Muslims against Jews, blacks against whites, one nation against another nation. […] Ideology immune to criticism is a problem. The [bigger] problem, however, is that only in religion do we put a veneer of sanctity over dogmatism, call it ‘faith’, and then once called ‘faith’ it becomes (apparently) a necessary and redeeming and precious part of the human experience. I don’t think it is. And I think we can have our ethics, and have our spirituality, and indeed even be mystics without ever presupposing anything on insufficient evidence and without ever lying to ourselves and to other human beings about what we know to be true.

By “religious beliefs”, Harris doesn’t mean merely a sense or feeling of wonderment, a feeling that there is more to realty than our five senses can discern, or something vague (but respectable) like that. Instead, he’s referring to massive and intricate belief systems involving dozens or hundreds of very specific (and competing or even mutually exclusive) ideas about the nature and will of God, about human beings, about history, etc. Here’s the situation as Harris summarizes it: there are competing religious systems that each have detailed ideas about reality with followers who (for the most part) can’t offer any actual evidence for thinking their specific ideas are accurate, but there’s an implicit taboo against putting religious claims under the microscope (metaphorically), which allows some of the more harmful ideas to flourish and taint society, and yet we’re (for the most part) expected to have some respect or admiration for these ideas because they’re taken on “faith”.

In every other area of inquiry – politics, philosophy, economics, etc. – we quite reasonably expect other people to substantiate their intricate belief systems/conclusions, especially when those ideas adversely affect the way they treat or view other people. It’s only in the context of religion that we show such misguided and totally undeserved “respect” for wildly implausible and evidence-lacking ideas, some of which have real life consequences. Many legislators propose and often pass destructive laws, many parents renounce their own children, and tons of people form socially disadvantageous “clicks” with a gratuitous us-vs.-them mentality, to say nothing of the more violent and extreme cases, all because of some (occasionally barbaric) religious texts that they “just know” to be “divinely inspired” based on the flimsiest of evidence (and often none at all). And then they become stunned and morally outraged when others critically analyze their ideas. Obviously religion is much more important to people’s psychological well-being than the other areas and it’s good to show compassion and sensitivity, but that doesn’t mean we should treat “faith” with kid gloves (err infant gloves) and show it such an undue level of admiration.

To be fair, there are some very sophisticated religious apologists who do try to offer evidence for at least some of their ideas (with varying degrees of success – I’ll let that issue pass for now), but that isn’t the case for the vast majority of believers.

If you're religious in Harris's sense, take a moment to imagine approaching someone of an opposing religious system in conversation and asking them what reasons/evidence they have for being so confident in their very specific ideas about God and reality. Let's say you're an "evangelical Christian" and they're a Mormon. Now imagine that Mormon replying by saying something like, “it’s okay guys; I don’t think it… I FEEL it.” Not good enough. But that's the kind of answer most religious people give, regardless of whether they're "born again christian", or Mormon, or Muslim, etc. Believers ought to have the humility to recognize that they don’t actually “know” their detailed ideas to be true, that their dogmas aren’t self-evident truths, and that their confidence *far* exceeds what can be reasonablyinferred from the evidence/arguments.

Sharing this bit on OCD because it's a subject that's important to me:

“My OCD attacked whatever was most important to me. […] It wasn’t always just a dull agony. Quite often it ramped into a shrill, turbulent nightmare. Overwhelming, engulfing terror would swallow me whole.”

— taken from

http://jackieleasommers.com/2013/02/11/ocd-torture/

only human

[NOTE: I will eventually update this post with specific examples to illustrate the point]

Maybe I have unrealistic ideals and standards, but I find it really disheartening (although not surprising given human limitations) to witness well-educated, experienced, and otherwise reasonable scientists and scholars allow preexisting ideology to cloud their judgment and imprison their minds; to see academics shift from being “cool as a cucumber”, in one area of inquiry, to stunningly closed-minded in another area of inquiry. And not merely closed minded, but also irrationally emotional – resorting to derision/mockery/sarcasm/etc. as substitutes for critical thinking, making glib hand-waving dismissals without even attempting to engage in deeper analysis, and being deliberately ignorant of the issues (i.e. refusing to look beyond the surface of an issue). Ironically, those stuck in unreasonable and irrational modes of thinking often proclaim themselves to be more reasonable and rational than their interlocutors. From their perspective, they’re being perfectly reasonable and sensible, and it’s everybody else who needs to wake up.

Of course, it’s disappointing when anybody is like this, but extra disappointing (at least for me) when it’s a veteran academic. Similarly, it’s gut-wrenching when an innocent person is murdered, but it’s extra gut-wrenching (at least for me) when the killer is a police officer. Reasonable people can and do disagree with each other without having emotion cloud their judgment. However, many academics do have foggy judgment and you can see it in the literature and speeches on atheism vs. theism, evolution vs. creationism, consciousness studies (especially when it comes to some of the more taboo areas within that field), competing theories and drugs in medicine, “in-house” debates among religious scholars who are broadly on “the same side”, etc.

For me, delving into those issues is a powerful reminder that nobody is a dispassionate fact-calculating machine; we’re all raw human beings with complex and nuanced needs, motivations, and reasons for thinking the way we think. I never want to be unknowingly trapped in a bubble of selective irrationality, oblivious to flaws that are obvious to everyone else. Reflecting on this inspires me to scrutinize my ideas more intensely than my toughest critics would.

"Ghost Hunters"

[QUOTE] The member list included some prominent... spiritualist followers. These members professed to agree with the plan for skeptical research. But it now appeared that they hadn’t meant for the word ‘skepticism’ to be taken quite so literally. Many spiritualists remained angry over the perceived negative findings in Nora’s analysis of ghost stories. Some quit in outrage over the exposé of Madame Blavatsky. The mediums in the organization were infuriated [...] It wasn’t just Nora who was antagonizing the membership. Richard Hodgson was back in England, cheerfully adding fuel to this already smoldering sense of resentment [...] There were no spirits in these séances, merely fast hands, hidden devices, distraction— and a wish by those participating to believe in magic. Following hard after the SPR’s earlier exposé, this struck the spiritualists as a gratuitous attack. [...] Even Alfred Russel Wallace was drawn into the fight, taking the side of the spiritualists and making it obvious how far he had fallen from the Darwinian mainstream for the moment. [...] Across that intractable Atlantic, the psychical researchers suffered through no such dramas, but then, their best work was being done in careful secrecy. [– End of quotation. See “Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death” (Blum, 2006)]

I absolutely adore Deborah Blum’s 2006 book “GhostHunters”, which chronicles the events surrounding the 1882 formation of the British Society for Psychical research (SPR) (as well as its American branch in 1885), a non-profit organization dedicated to conducting impartial research into claims of the paranormal. Members included Sigmund Freud, William James, Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll, F.W.H. Myers (who coined the word “telepathy”), several Nobel Laureates, a Prime Minister, and many other note-worthy people. In my judgment (without going into much detail now) “Ghost Hunters” has some flaws in it, but it’s still a great introduction for anyone interested in the history of parapsychology, which is the scientific study of allegedly “psychic” abilities (to the extent that such abilities can be studied empirically). In the tradition of the SPR, identifying as a parapsychologist (or a “psychical researcher”) does not imply either acceptance or denial of the existence of psychic abilities. Instead, it merely signifies that one conducts experiments to test whether these abilities ever occur, regardless of whether the results are positive or negative.

There’s actually a rich history of psychical research carried out during the Victorian Era by otherwise respected scientists and scholars with differing opinions and varying degrees of confidence (or lack thereof). Some were mega skeptics, some were fence sitters, and some were “believers” – although even many of the believers were cynical; in a letter to William James, Edmund Gurney complained that 95% of cases were obvious fraud and that only 5% of cases were “worth” looking into.

Diehard “skeptics” and “believers” alike will enjoy Blum’s book.

gays and tattoos

(Above image taken from this site)

To be fair, it’s possible that Leviticus 19:28 is referring to a nearby idolatrous “pagan” practice of tattooing oneself at funerals to obtain postmortem favors, in which case the man in the picture is not being an ironic hypocrite. Some try to argue that Leviticus 18:22 is similarly culturally limited with (in my judgment) varying degrees of success.

But, for now, let’s forget about all of that. My interest in the picture goes much further than the verses in question. What I find more disturbing (and also more interesting) is that many people sincerely believe that Leviticus and the rest of the “Old Testament” books truly and unequivocally dictate the will of God without exception and that is what I will focus on here. Many people sincerely believe that God -- the Ground of Being/ that which all of reality (apart from that Ground of Being itself) is completely reducible to and dependent upon-- actually uttered the words that are attributed to “him” by the authors of Leviticus, Deuteronomy, etc.

I assume the man in the picture holds that view, or at least something close to it. (If not, no worries. He inspired me to reflect on the issues I raise below, but one needn't apply the issues to that man.) If so, I wonder if he would be willing to get a tattoo of one or more of the following:

    (1) Leviticus 20:18, which forbids men from having sex with women who are on their periods. It may seem gross, but I know many Christian men who oppose same-sex eroticism but have nevertheless had sex with a woman during menstruation and intend to do it again.

   (2) 1 Samuel 15:2-3, which quotes God as telling the Israelites to 

attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, CHILDREN AND INFANTS, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys[!]

This text could not be any more barbaric than it already is. To make sure we get the picture, God (through the author) tells them to kill the “infants” too. And, for some reason, God didn’t like their camels or donkeys either. Please note that this vicious military order (according to the text itself) came from God himself. Either the author was right or he was wrong; there’s no middle ground here. If the author was wrong – if God did not tell the Israelites to murder innocent infants – then this text does not reflect the will of God. Which is it? 

    (3) 2 Kings 2:23-24, in which Elisha curses 42 children “in the name of the Lord”, which results in two bears appearing and tearing the children “to pieces”. Why did the two bears butcher those children “in the name of the lord”? According to the text, it’s because the children were mocking Elisha for being bald...   


   (4) 2 Samuel 12:11-14, which quotes God as threatening to take David’s wives and hand them over to his “neighbor”, who will then “lie with” David’s wives “in broad daylight.” Please note that the text quotes God himself.

    (5) Exodus 31:14, which demands the death penalty for anybody who “worked on the Sabbath” (“Keep the Sabbath holy. You have six days to do your work, but the Sabbath is mine, and it must remain a day of rest. If you work on the Sabbath, you will no longer be part of my people, and you will be put to death.”) In other words, relax and take a break or else I will kill you...

    (6) Deut 21:18-21, which commands parents to have their consistently disobedient sons murdered out in the open by “all the men of the city”. Here’s the passage:

 If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

Forget Rescue Nanny 911. If your bratty son won’t listen to you, eh, just have your neighbors murder him by smashing him with rocks. That way you can “purge evil from your midst”.

    (7) Deut 22:13-21, which commanded the Israelites to murder women who weren’t virgins when they got married. Even worse, it was supposed to take place right in front of “the door of her father’s house”! On the other hand, if husband’s accusation is false – if the woman really was a virgin when they got married— then the husband must pay the woman’s father “a hundred shekels of silver”.

    (8) etc.

I don’t get any pleasure out of flaunting these darker passages. Instead, my point is that many people who mindlessly use the OT as a weapon against gay human beings seem unaware of what else the OT says.

 Many people really believe that the creator and source of time itself and the cosmic engineer who “finely tuned” the “constants” of physics and sparked inflation --and perhaps also the creator of countless other space-time manifolds-- actually inspired all of the aforementioned passages. The anti-gay verse of Leviticus 20:13 is bad enough, but people should also be talking about all of the many other nasty passages and commandments in the Hebrew scriptures.

To be fair, there is no logical inconsistency between the proposition “God exists” (if we go by a minimal definition of “God”), on the one hand, and the idea that the OT texts unequivocally dictate the will of God without exception, on the other hand. I just want people to be aware of what that actually entails. It would make God petty and every bit as nasty as some of the war criminals and tyrants many Christians so love to despise. I’ll end by quoting a passage from the 2006 book “The God Delusion” by the zoologist Richard Dawkins:

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.*

 (* For the record, I give “The God Delusion” 5 out of 10 stars and feel that it’s overrated in terms of its contributions to the philosophy of religion. I just get some guilty pleasure out of this passage from the book because it’s so eloquent and neatly-worded. It’s even fun to read aloud)