5 strange-but-true health cures

ya well we're all dying of something anyway, so all this money spent on research to make us live longer can be better spent to help where it is really needed--food and clothing for poor/poverty stricken people...there's no human cure for death so you all might as well face facts and live with it---no pun intended.

Hey, us babyboomers just want the truth! Our bodies do not recognize disease by name. If our brain is not functioning the way it should, then maybe we should be enhancing detoxification. If we are getting every "bug" on the go then maybe we should be boosting our immune system. If our hormones are out of balance, then maybe we consider how to make our endrocrine system perform better. I think it's all about "function" You keep your car engine purring, why don't we keep our body systems up and running? Is it time we took responsibilty/control of our own health?

Of course research findings compiled through the use of animals does not directly transfer to humans. THAT'S NOT THE POINT OF RESEARCH!!! These studies are done to merely further an academic conversation among those in the related field of interest. Results of studies like these are only used as an IDEA of what COULD be possible in humans, since mammals are similar in genetic makeup. These types of results can be taken, and the studies can be modified, in order to produce a study with ethics clearance for humans, and determine whether there is actual statistical significance that indeed shows coffee to be effective in reducing the onset of amyloid protein aggregation in the human brain. Currently, evidence of neurological degradation due to amyloid proteins is only provable through post-mortem pathological dissection (which is why mice were used). You can however use MRI scans in humans to PREDICT that the amyloids are aggregating, but it is not conclusive, making a direct relationship between this study and humans very difficult to accomplish.

Makes sense - probably helps them learn to regulate their breathing better and may well contribute to relaxation, therefore better quality sleep, therefore less daytime sleepiness

Findings done in animals do not necessarily extend to humans. Think of what happened with Thalidomide.

Well, my Dad drank coffee everyday, even at his snack at night around 8-9 p.m. and he still got Alzheimers so it doesn't work for everyone. It runs in my family, my Dad, his brother, his sister....so its scary for the 4 of us in my family.!

They use mice because they have a shorter lifespan than people so the results may be known in months or years rather than decades.

Clearly you don't understand how investigative, health-related, Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) style research works. Chances are if you actually read the published form of this study which these generalized results were drawn from, you could see from the methodology that the use of mice is necessitated. How do you think that they were able to decipher that the coffee inhibited the amyloid plaques formed in the alzheimer's process? I would be willing to bet a large sum of money that there was some sort of invasive maneuver (i.e. cranial surgery). You think that they would just open up a whole bunch of living human heads just to find out if coffee did what they were hypothesizing?? Ridiculous. Not to mention, The use of mice in experiments like this are used because developmental processes (like Alzheimer's) occur at a rate many, many times greater than in humans, therefore giving the researchers a more reasonable timeline to complete a study. Read some books before making comments like that. Its research like that that keeps you alive longer than you have been without it.

How do they know? Did they ask the mice questions before they fed them coffee and then ask them the same questions later? Did the mices' answers change after the caffeine memory reversal process? Where do they come up with this stuff?

It's illegal to study the affects of drugs on people... this is why they are the researchers, not you!

Some scientists do lack imagination - I'm not afraid to say so. Why use mice if people can be used in the first place - as if coffee is something new to mankind? I think this is cheap marketing...

Why waste time and money doing research on mice? Who is paying for this? Who authorized this study? I'm amazed. They could have used people from the beginning! Obviously they don't drink enough coffee!!!