Drinking Coffee All the Time

Coffee is good for you. More evidence is here. And this time it's aimed directly at women. A new study from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden shows that higher-than-normal coffee consumption significantly decreases the risk of ER-negative breast cancer.* This study, which was published as a provisional PDF in Breast Cancer Research on May 11, 2011, included almost 6,000 women, who were included in six different cancer registries in Sweden. Available information about the women, who were all between the ages of 50 and 74, included health status, lifestyle habits, and various other factors (like whether the women were taking hormone therapy) that needed to be factored into the analysis in order to make it valid. The study was well designed in that it was a population-based and case controlled. When the researchers compared women who drank 5 or more cups of coffee a day with those who drank one cup or less, they found a modest overall decrease (about 20%, with a trend tow

When I was 15, I started brewing coffee with my mother’s Melitta Drip Coffee Maker. I learned by watching her. She would carefully take out a filter and line the plastic cone that sat on top of a glass carafe. The coffee dripped very slowly and seemed to take a long, long time to brew. It smelled amazing. I watched in utter fascination. Then, I started taking sips when she wasn’t looking. We never had a conversation about whether I should drink coffee or not. I just started making and drinking coffee---all day long, and into the night. Coffee made me feel better, more alive, and more focused. When I started drinking coffee, I became a better student, a better friend, a better big sister, a better daughter. Still, I assumed that on some level I was harming my health. I secretly feared that one day if I didn’t stop in time, my obsession with coffee would catch up with me. Like my friends who smoked cigarettes or went out drinking, I treated my penchant for Maxwell House l