Kick Start Your Heart

Great News! New studies are showing that coffee drinkers have far less of a chance of developing dementia and Alzheimer's later in life. Two cups seems to be the magic number. They have no conclusive evidence as to what effect 8 to 10 cups of coffee per day might do. That worries me a little because that's my dosage- a full pot every morning. It takes that much to get my heart kick-started. I suspect this is somewhere between 1500 and 1800 mg's of the morning's punctuation mark. But just think, if 2 cups is that beneficial, might not 10 cups create a higher I.Q.? Or maybe, improve my chances of solving Super Sudoku's?

For the non-coffee drinker, take heart. There is also medical proof that tea provides anti- oxidants that are good for the body. Red wine has the same effect. These two I try to drink in moderation, unless certain friends stop by. They tend to over-serve us. And right in our own home! Of all the nerve. We've talked to them about it, always over a glass of wine. Well, one thing leads to another and there you go. They do it again.

My addiction to coffee started in the Navy. Standing watch over a building that no communist would ever think of breaking into, you get pretty bored in the wee hours on watch. I had never liked coffee growing up. But after 2 or 3 hours of watching file cabinets (no computers in the Navy for us back then), one needed help. Of course, there was always the fear that if you ever did fall asleep, you would have to stand before the Man (at a Captain's mast). There was always free coffee available, so that's when the whole thing started. I probably wasted dozens of your taxpayer dollars learning just how best to get the stuff down at first. I settled on just a little sugar. I don't think the Navy provided saccharin. There wasn't Splenda, Nutrasweet, etcetera back then. It also took a while to get the dosage just right. After a few nights of having the euphoria of the coffee buzz keep me up for days at a time, I finally decided how many cups kept me alert, without sending me to the gym to try and sweat it all out.

The hardest thing for me to understand as the years progressed was how Starbucks ever made it. How in the world could anyone justify spending $4 on a cup of coffee? Then, like most Americans, I tried some of their Super Vendi Mocha Latte with a swirl and got hooked. This went on, like the extra pounds, for years until I read somewhere what the calories were in one of those bad boys. After quitting Starbucks and cutting out the sausage biscuit every morning I dropped 20 pounds like I'd had liposuction. It was a difficult divorce. Two of my favorite things had to go away.

Which brings me to the next point. Coffee drinkers have a lower incidence of Type 2 Diabetes. I don't think they included Starbucks patrons in the study. But it stands to reason that if you're bouncing off walls and doing back flips at the office, your weight stays down, which is the real demon when it comes to Diabetes.

My wife doesn't drink coffee. Never has. She does drink tea, which makes me feel better about the potential for dementia later on. And, she gets quite a kick when I do back flips through the house when I overdose on java. So, though unemployed, I still get up in the morning and fire up my new Krups coffee maker and grab the paper. I enjoy reading it, knowing that when I finish, I'll remember at least some of what I read. Now, where was I?