Coffee and Its Relationship to Your Health What’s the first thing you do in the morning? For most of us in the United States, it’s one spread around the Arabian Peninsula, and cafes began to pop up, known as “Schools of the Wise” for the intellectual conversations that happened there.
evidence, caffeine intake may be linked to reduced risk for certain diseases in healthy adults. Scientists think that antioxidants found in coffee, such as polyphenols, might contribute to its positive effects. There’s one major caveat, however. While coffee shows potential benefits when consumed in moderate amounts, the sugar and other additives that many of us like to put in it get a thumbs-down. The Dietary Guidelines also note that health alone isn’t a reason to start drinking caffeine. Folks with blood pressure concerns should be especially careful and should consult their doctor about how much coffee is okay to drink, as studies have shown evidence of increased blood pressure with caffeine consumption.
crucial task: getting that morning cup of joe. Our obsession with coffee is nothing new. A paper entitled “The Consumption of Coffee in the United States,” published July 18, 1861, noted that “the people of the United States habitually consume more coffee than the inhabitants of any other country.” Its popularity has only increased with time; people in the U.S. consume an estimated 400 million cups of coffee a day. Of course, we weren’t the first to find out how great coffee is. Long before anyone in the Americas enjoyed the beverage, legend has it that an Ethiopian goat herder discovered the amazing effects of coffee beans — on his goats. He noticed that after eating “berries” from a certain tree, his goats became so energetic they didn’t want to sleep. News
In addition to coffee’s long-standing popularity, science has found several reasons to give our morning habit the thumbs-up. In 2015, the U.S. Dietary Guidelines evaluated the effects of coffee and caffeine for the first time, concluding that coffee can be part of a healthy lifestyle “along with other behaviors, such as refraining from smoking, consuming a nutritionally balanced diet, maintaining a healthy body weight, and being physically active.” The guidelines cite “strong and consistent evidence” that consuming coffee within the moderate range (3–5 cups per day, or up to 400 mg of caffeine per day) is not associated with an increased risk of major diseases. In fact, according to observational
Everything in moderation, as the saying goes, at least when it comes to caffeine.
Jeff Longspaugh Answers the Question Do I Need a Water Softener?
purification system, in our kitchen, so our drinking water is as good as bottled water. The water we use to boil our vegetables, drink, and give to our animals is free of chlorine, fluoride, arsenic, and all of those bad chemicals and minerals. So was there a difference after we got the water softener? Let me tell you — we noticed it right off the bat. The first thing you notice is how your hair feels after you’ve finished shampooing it. All our hair is now silky smooth, and all our dishes are crystal clear. The science behind this is that the soft water doesn’t leave behind the minerals that the hard water does. Again, I’m a rough-and-tumble guy. I’m proud of blisters and splinters — not too far from a caveman in many respects. However, I do like my soft water, and I’m certainly shocked that I could know so much about the makeup of water and the distribution of water but never have understood the many benefits of soft water until using it.
Well, I don’t know, do you? Nobody really needs anything besides food, water, and shelter, but let me tell you my story about water softeners.
I’m a rough-and-tumble guy. I pride myself on not needing much of anything. One time, I went down to the Yukon River for 10 days in a canoe with nothing but a blue tarp and a sleeping bag, drinking water out of a peach can. Because I grew up with a couple of brothers, running around like Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, the trip was perfect. Fast forward 25 years later. Now I’m the only guy in the house. I have my wife and three daughters, who are in sixth, fifth, and fourth grade. I didn’t think that water softness would make much of a difference, but it did. I’m a master plumber and a Texas water treatment specialist. In other words, I understand water hardness. I get what’s in my water, but then I ask myself, “Jeff, how can you tell somebody they need a water softener when you don’t even have one?”
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So I got one. We installed a custom carbon filter and water softener to see if it made a difference. We’ve always had reverse osmosis, a water
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