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Benefit

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"Why you really shouldn't be drinking that much coffee - you know it's bad for you!" Gram's seventy-year old friend kindly chastised.
Gram sat down her cup and looked at her youthful companion, a twinkle in her eye, "and when you are my age, you may chide all you want about the evils of coffee," she responded. While she was just finishing her pot of the day, there was not one tremor in the ninety-six year old's hands.

Now, most people could not drink a pot of the true stuff without perhaps sleep problems, but my Gram had the good ole German constitution of a goat. She started drinking coffee in East Germany when she was about two years old. "Very watered down," she would confess. Well, maybe I take after my German heritage, because a day can't go by without it for me. However, growing up in America, I didn't start quite so young. I started drinking cafe au lait at the age of nineteen for all the wrong reasons - all of my friends were doing it. Long study hours and the abundance of coffee shops in the eighties in New York City helped to encourage my habit.

By the time I was thirty I was down right cranky if I didn't get my morning java. By the time I was forty - a terrible headache would ensue. What a great break for the coffee industry! They had a lifelong addict in me. And then - good news! More and more reports were coming out endorsing the BENEFITS of coffee. WebMD claims that after an eighteen-year study, Harvard researchers made a connection between coffee drinking and a decrease in diabetes risk. The more consumed, the lower the risk. My kind of statistic!

Other studies claim that consuming coffee on a regular basis seriously decreases your chances of developing Parkinson's. There are currently some Parkinson drugs being development based on this study.

Another study showed that two cups consumed a day translates to a twenty-five percent chance reduced risk of colon cancer, and can even help reduce the onset of cavities! Of course these studies need more work, but they are a start, and to this coffee lover, music to my ears.

Now I have been a long time sufferer of migraines, and I can attest to the help a bit of caffeine does for my aching head. And while sometimes I just can't resist that five-dollar cup of goodness from Starbucks, I do see coffee in that case as being worse for my bank account than my health.

I just hope that sometime if I make it to my grandma's age, I can look back on my lifelong love of java and say to a friend, "and I still have all my own teeth, too."

Learn more about this author, Deanne Phillips.
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