"What I tell patients is, if you like coffee, go ahead and drink as much as you want and can," says Dr. Peter Martin, director of the Institute for Coffee Studies at Vanderbilt University. He's even developed a metric for monitoring your dosage: If you are having trouble sleeping, cut back on your last cup of the day. From there, he says, "If you drink that much, it's not going to do you any harm, and it might actually help you. A lot."
Officially, the American Medical Association recommends conservatively that "moderate tea or coffee drinking likely has no negative effect on health, as long as you live an otherwise healthy lifestyle." That is a lackluster endorsement in light of so much recent glowing research. Not only have most of coffee's purported ill effects been disproven -- the most recent review fails to link it the development of hypertension -- but we have so, so much information about its benefits. We believe they extend from preventing Alzheimer's disease to protecting the liver. What we know goes beyond small-scale studies or limited observations. The past couple of years have seen findings, that, taken together, suggest that we should embrace coffee for reasons beyond the benefits of caffeine, and that we might go so far as to consider it a nutrient.
The most recent findings that support coffee as a panacea will make their premiere this December in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Coffee, researchers found, appears to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes.
"There have been many metabolic studies that have shown that caffeine, in the short term, increases your blood glucose levels and increases insulin resistance," Shilpa Bhupathiraju, a research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health's Department of Nutrition and the study's lead author, told me. But "those findings really didn't translate into an increased risk for diabetes long-term." During the over 20 years of follow-up, and controlling for all major lifestyle and dietary risk factors, coffee consumption, regardless of caffeine content, was associated with an 8 percent decrease in the risk of type 2 diabetes in women. In men, the reduction was 4 percent for regular coffee and 7 percent for decaf.
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The findings were arrived at rigorously, relying on data from the Nurses' Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, two prospective studies that followed almost 80,000 women and over 40,000 men from the 1980s through 2008. Although self-reported, the data is believed to be extremely reliable because it comes from individuals who know more about health and disease than the average American (the downside, of course, is that results won't always apply to the general population -- but in this case, Bhupathuraju explained that there's no reason to believe that the biological effects seen in health professionals wouldn't be seen in everyone else).
That there were no major differences in risk reduction between regular and decaf coffee suggests there's something in it, aside from its caffeine content, that could be contributing to these observed benefits. It also demonstrates that caffeine was in no way mitigating coffee's therapeutic effects. Of course, what we choose to add to coffee can just as easily negate the benefits -- various sugar-sweetened beverages were all significantly associated with an increased risk of diabetes. A learned taste for cream and sugar (made all the more enticing when they're designed to smell like seasonal celebrations) is likely one of the reasons why we associate coffee more with decadence than prudence.
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"Coffee and caffeine have been inexorably intertwined in our thinking, but truth is coffee contains a whole lot of other stuff with biological benefits," said Martin. And most concerns about caffeine's negative effects on the heart have been dispelled. In June, a meta-analysis of ten years of research went so far as to find an inverse association between habitual, moderate consumption and risk of heart failure. The association peaked at four cups per day, and coffee didn't stop being beneficial until subjects had increased their daily consumption to beyond ten cups.
Caffeine might also function as a pain reliever. A study from September suggested as much when its authors stumbled across caffeinated coffee as a possible confounding variable in its study of the back, neck, and shoulder pains plaguing office drones: Those who reported drinking coffee before the experiment experienced less intense pain.
The data is even more intriguing -- and more convincing -- for caffeine's effects as a salve against more existential pains. While a small study this month found that concentrated amounts of caffeine can increase positivity in the moment, last September the nurses' cohort demonstrated a neat reduction in depression rates among women that became stronger with increased consumption of caffeinated coffee.
But that caffeine is only mechanism behind coffee's health effects is supported by a small study of 554 Japanese adults from October that looked at coffee and green tea drinking habits in relation to the bundle of risk factors for coronary artery disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes known together as metabolic syndrome. Only coffee -- not tea -- was associated with reduced risk, mostly because of dramatic reductions observed in serum triglyceride levels.
So aside from caffeine, just what are you getting in a cup, or two, or six? Thousands of mostly understudied chemicals that contribute to flavor and aroma, including plant phenols, chlorogenic acids, and quinides, all of which function as antioxidants. Diterpenoids in unfiltered coffee may raise good cholesterol and lower bad cholesterol. And, okay, there's also ash which, to be fair, is no more healthful than you would think -- though it certainly isn't bad for you.
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Some of the chemicals in coffee are known carcinogens, though as far as we know that's only been seen in rodents, not in the small levels we encounter in everyday consumption. Findings, on the other hand, have been supporting that coffee can protect against some cancers. When the Harvard School of Public Health visited the Health Professionals Follow-Up cohort in May 2011, it found that coffee's protective effects extend only to some types of prostate cancer (the most aggressive types, actually). In a separate study of the same population from this past July, they also found a reduced risk of basal cell carcinoma with increased caffeine intake.
The association was strongest for those who drank six or more cups per day.
That same high dosage is also effective in fighting against colorectal cancer, according to a prospective study from June of almost 500,000 adults conducted by the American Society for Nutrition. While the association was greatest for caffeinated varieties, decaf made a small but significant showing. A meta-analysis of 16 independent studies this past January added endometrial cancer to the group of cancers whose relative risk decreases with increased "dosage" of coffee. And in 2011, a large population of post-menopausal women in Sweden saw a "modest" reduction in breast cancer risk with immoderate consumption of 5 or more daily cups.
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Taking the benefits of coffee any further requires being patient-specific, but findings apply to a broad range of populations and conditions:
If you have fatty liver disease, a study from last December found that unspecified amounts can reduce your risk of fibrosis.
If you're on a road trip, you may respond like the 24 volunteers for an experiment from February who were subjected to two hours of simulated "monotonous highway driving," given a short break, then sent back out for two more hours. Those given a cup of coffee during the break weaved less, and showed reductions in driving speed, mental effort, and subjective sleepiness. If you're on a weight-training regimen, it can provide a mild (and legal) doping effect.
If you're trying to enhance your workout, the results of one experiment from October found that drinks containing caffeine enhances performance. And then another one from Dr. Martin in 2008: He coauthored a study of people enrolled in Alcoholics Anonymous in which there appeared to be an association between upping coffee intake and staying sober.
Nothing can be all good, and there is still information working against coffee -- in October, TheAtlanticreported on a study from the health professionals cohort that suggested a link between excessive coffee consumption and glaucoma. "The current recommendation is that if somebody's not drinking coffee, you don't tell them to start," said Bhupathiraju.
But she agrees that drinking coffee, and more of it, does appear to be beneficial. The evidence remains overwhelmingly in coffee's favor. Yes, it was observational, but the study published in May in the New England Journal of Medicine looked at hundreds of thousands of men and women and found this bottom line result: people who drank coffee lived longer than those who didn't.
And the more they drank, the longer they lived. If you're into that sort of thing.
A decades-old legal battle is a reminder of how hard many creators have to fight to get credit and compensation for their own work.
One week ago, Marvel put out a press release announcing something special: a five-day celebration of the life and work of Jack Kirby, the spectacularly talented and influential artist whose work underlies the majority of modern superhero comics. “Jack ‘The King’ Kirby is one of the founding fathers of the Marvel Universe,” the release trumpeted. “From August 22nd to the 28th—what would have been Kirby's 99th birthday—Marvel will pay homage to the incredible and iconic contributions Kirby has made to the House of Ideas, entertainment, and pop-culture.” On offer were articles about Kirby’s creation of famousMarvelcharacters, podcast interviews with his son and granddaughter, and retrospective collections of Kirby’s art.
Every year, participants in the Burning Man Festival descend on the playa of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert to form a temporary city—a self-reliant community populated by performers, artists, free spirits, and more.
Every year, participants in the Burning Man Festival descend on the playa of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert to form a temporary city—a self-reliant community populated by performers, artists, free spirits, and more. An estimated 70,000 people from all over the world came to the 30th annual Burning Man to dance, express themselves, and take in the spectacle. Gathered below are some of the sights from this year, photographed once again by Reuters photographer Jim Urquhart.
What one of the Supreme Court’s most humiliating mistakes tells us about the debate over Colin Kaepernick’s national-anthem protest.
“We almost beat one guy to death to make him kiss the flag,” a patriot in Litchfield, Illinois, told a Chicago reporter in 1940.
When that vigilante beat a dissenter in the street—and when hundreds like him brutalized, terrorized, and even mutilated Jehovah’s Witnesses around the country —they were acting, they believed, with the imprimatur of the law, the Constitution, and the Supreme Court, which had ruled that the Witnesses’ religious objection to reciting the Pledge of Allegiance was invalid.
The Court and the nation learned a lesson from that episode. Lessons in tolerance, however, must be learned anew generation by generation. Not long ago, the public worked itself into an uproar when Olympic gymnast Gabby Douglas, respectfully standing for the anthem in Rio, simply did not place her hands the way some people thought she should. But that was mere prologue to the outcry over San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who refused even to stand for the anthem before a game at Levi’s Stadium, and who, unlike Douglas, did so in protest.
The two apps that dominate high-school social life
Exactly one month ago, Instagram pilfered a major feature from Snapchat, and the teen photo wars entered a new and more ruthless chapter.
The feature, Instagram “Stories,” lets a user share a photo or video that will be automatically deleted after 24 hours. This closely resembles a Snapchat feature, also named “Stories,” that lets users share a photo or video that will be automatically deleted after 24 hours.
As the Times put it, “some might say [Instagram’s feature] is a carbon copy.” Some might. Some might even highlight that the only significant difference between the two features is their context: While a 24-hour Snapchat story lasts much longer than a 10-second disappearing Snapchat message, a 24-hour Instagram story perishes faster than an Instagram post, which is never automatically deleted. In other words, Snapchat invented stories to promote permanence, but Instagram adopted them to encourage ephemerality.
Like a little white Lazarus with red eyes, the paralyzed mouse was walking again.
A few days earlier, the mouse had been sprawled on an operating table while two Chinese graduate students peered through a microscope and operated on its spine. With a tiny pair of scissors, they removed the top half of a fingernail-thin vertebra, exposing a gleaming patch of spinal-cord tissue. It looked like a Rothko, a clean ivory rectangle bisected by a red line. Cautiously—the mouse occasionally twitched—they snipped the red line (an artery) and tied it off. Then one student reached for a $1,000 scalpel with a diamond blade so thin that it was transparent. With a quick slice of the spinal cord, the mouse’s back legs were rendered forever useless.
A documentary film-maker was disinvited from an academic conference because an organizer feared she would be subject to ideologically motivated reprisals for hosting him.
This spring, Syracuse University will host an international conference with a theme, “The Place of Religion in Film,” that made one of its organizers think of Shimon Dotan.
The award-winning filmmaker, who sits on the faculty of New York University’s graduate school of journalism, recently finished a feature length documentary, The Settlers, that chronicles the history and present state of the religious settler movement in the West Bank, where more than 400,000 Israeli Jews live on occupied land.
The film is “one of the first close-up views of the motives and personalities in a group that rarely opens up to outsiders,” The New York Timesnoted. Varietyraved that its festival presence is assured, and said that it is gripping enough to break out to wider audiences.
In a new model of living, residents will have their own “microunits” built around a shared living space for cooking, eating and hanging out.
SYRACUSE—This office looks like a pretty typical co-working space, what with the guy with a ponytail coding in one corner, the pile of bikes clustered in another, and the minimalist desks spread across a light-filled room. Troy Evans opened this space, CoWorks, in a downtown building here in February.
Coworking is probably a familiar concept at this point, but Evans wants to take his idea a step further. On Friday, on the top two floors of the building, he’s starting construction on a space he envisions as a dorm for Millennials, though he cringes at the word “dorm.” Commonspace, as he’s calling it, will feature 21 microunits, which each pack a tiny kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and living space into 300-square-feet. The microunits surround shared common areas including a chef’s kitchen, a game room, and a TV room. Worried about the complicated social dynamics of so many Millennials in one living unit? Fear not, Evans and partner John Talarico are hiring a “social engineer” who will facilitate group events and maintain harmony among roommates.
The football player lost a unique opportunity to help the country understand the nature of police violence.
I admire Colin Kaepernick. I admire his courage in doing what he thinks is right even though it could cost him money and perhaps his job. You don’t see that from public figures very often. I admire him for raising awareness about police brutality. I also admire the veterans who have defended him by arguing, correctly, that they are defending his right to sit or stand when the national anthem plays. That’s what living in a free country means.
But it’s one thing to defend Kaepernick’s right to protest and to applaud his outrage over state-sanctioned racism. It’s another to believe that his particular form of protest is wise. Throughout American history, the most effective protests have embraced American symbols and demanded that America’s government live up to the ideals those symbols are supposed to represent. As the early 20th-century socialist Norman Thomas famously advised his fellow radicals, “Don’t burn the flag, wash it.” Sitting for the national anthem is like burning the flag. By rejecting a core national symbol, you’re symbolically rejecting the nation itself. You’re implying that America is impervious to reform, corrupt and evil at its core. That’s different than going on TV to denounce police violence or donning an “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirt on the court like LeBron James.
In the mobile internet age, there has been an astonishing leap in how much is written about leading presidential candidates—not just Trump.
Donald Trump is everywhere. It sometimes seems, and has seemed this way for several months, that the Republican nominee is all anyone can talk about.
Whether this is because the media is doing its duty or because news organizations are capitalizing on Trump’s bombast for ratings and traffic is a matter of debate. But one thing is clear: Trump is getting outsized attention compared with his opponents.
The Atlantic’s daily media tracker, which tallies television mentions of the candidates, shows Trump dominating. As of March, journalism’s obsession with Trump had totaled the equivalent of about $2 billion in free media, according to an analysis by mediaQuant, a company that uses advertising rates to assign a dollar amount to the amount of media coverage a candidate gets. Hillary Clinton had garnered about $746 million in free media at the time, The New York Timesreported, while Bernie Sanders free media totaled about $321 million. (“Free media” doesn’t necessarily help a candidate, though. Though Trump seems to embrace the “no publicity is bad publicity” mantra, his favorability ratings among voters are miserable.)
Lessons gleaned from 30 years of covering American politics—from Bill Clinton to Donald Trump.
I left political journalism once before—to help launch a social media site designed to engage political influencers in civil conversation. It failed (one critic called it “the idiotic Hotsoup.com”), but among the many lessons I took away from the experience was one about journalism.
In a meeting just before the site launched, my business partners—six of the smartest, most successful political consultants in Washington—debated which reporter would be given an interview announcing our venture.
I mentioned a particular journalist known to be an easy mark inside the White Houses of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Afraid of confrontation, eager to please, and lazy, this reporter printed whatever minor bits of news and color aides fed him, without skepticism or criticism. I didn’t respect the guy. Nor did most other reporters forced to compete against a patsy who benefited from a policy of mutual-assured promotion.
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