Apparently coffee is good for your mental health, at least if you are a woman. A new study released in the Archives of Internal Medicine followed over 50,000 women over a 10 year period and discovered that women who drank 4 cups of caffeinated coffee a day were 20% less likely to suffer from depression than women who did not drink coffee on a regular basis.
In an article on Reuters.com, they break down the findings and discuss the implications. The interesting things that stood out to me were the sheer numbers the researchers were working with and how careful they were to account for variables that could have impacted outcome. I also was impressed that even though the focus was on coffee, the researchers pulled in data from other forms of caffeine (such as chocolate and soft drinks) and found that the caffeine was what impacted outcomes the most. Those who drank de-caffeinated coffee did not have the same outcomes as those who drank caffeinated coffee.
After reading both the research and the article I think it would be better to say that caffeine, rather than coffee, is what reduces the risk of depression. The researchers could not state that because they did not study the other forms of caffeine, but the impact seems pretty clear to my non-scientific eye. Since caffeine is a stimulant, it would make sense that people who have a high intake of it would be less depressed.
It seems that every month I hear of how something I eat/drink could impact my health. Sometimes the news is positive, but more often it’s negative. My favorite beverage is making me fat, even though it has zero calories. My favorite restaurant’s seemingly innocent menu is really a caloric time-bomb. The medication I take does long-lasting damage. One could get to the point that they don’t even care about all of this “great” insight, because it is overwhelming. So when I see something like this – that maybe the chocolate I crave everyday is not ALL bad – I like to share. We can all use some good news every now and then!