Should we be drinking coffee?

The same ole health grind

We're always hearing about how we shouldn't be drinking coffee (usually without any other explanation…you'd think it was rocket fuel or something).

What coffee needs, I have always thought, is a good shtick, like being a miracle cure for this or that.
And now comes some interesting news from Massachusetts General Hospital that indicates coffee (well, caffeine, but coffee's got plenty of that) may prevent Parkinson's disease.

There are brain chemicals, known as A2A receptors, that play a key role in the development of Parkinson's disease. Caffeine blocks these receptors from acting on the brain, which can slow the disease's progression or even protect you from getting Parkinson's and its characteristic motor problems-like shaking-in the first place. Researcher Dr. Michael Schwarzschild said "the animal results lend more weight to caffeine's neuroprotective nature."

So now coffee might have its long-awaited shtick, so I say go ahead and have a cuppa joe. Or two. And tell all the killjoys out there you're protecting your brain.

Bean there, done that,
Dr. William Campbell Douglass II, MD