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The popular, formerly caffeinated, fruity alcoholic beverage, Four Loko, has been blamed for the spike in alcohol-related hospitalizations, especially throughout college campuses. Initially, caffeine was deemed the culprit and the Food and Drug Administration ordered all traces of caffeine to be removed from Four Loko and all other similar beverages. However, according to an upcoming evaluation in Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, caffeine might not be the primary cause of the spike in hospitalizations. “Four Loko didn’t have the extraordinary intoxicating effect because of caffeine, but rather because of the phenomenon of situational...

The FDA is expected to declare caffeine additives in alcoholic drinks as unsafe this week, according to Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. This will effectively ban such products. But it’s unclear how effective the ban will be. The alcoholic energy drink craze developed from nightclub patrons mixing Red Bull and vodka to stay up partying long into the night. Bartenders will continue to serve up such cocktails, and it’s not exactly rocket science for people at home.

A cheap drink that combines alcohol and caffeine will be off Oklahoma store shelves next month. Alcohol regulators said they want to stop sales of Four Loko and will target other alcohol drinks that contain energy additives. The Oklahoma Alcoholic Beverage Laws Enforcement Commission put a moratorium on all alcoholic beverages containing caffeine, guarana and taurine. Experts said one can of Four Loko is like drinking a six-pack of light beer and two cups of coffee. It also sells for less than $2 per can, which makes it popular with cost-conscious young people. "This malt beverage is actually half as...

A British man died after poisoning himself with two spoonfuls of caffeine powder bought over the internet, local media reported Friday. Michael Lee Bedford, 23, from Mansfield, central England, was at a party in April when he swallowed caffeine powder that a friend bought online for £3.29 ($5.26), Nottingham Coroner’s Court heard Thursday. He washed the powder down with an energy drink, and around 15 minutes later began sweating and vomiting blood. He later died at King’s Mill Hospital in Nottinghamshire, central England, the Nottingham Post reported. The court heard that Bedford ignored the product's recommendation to take no more...

Liquor stores reassess Four Loko for ‘liquid crack’ reputationBy Meaghan Beatley Updated: Wednesday, October 27, 2010 06:10 Recent concerns over the popular alcoholic energy drink Four Loko have prompted at least one Boston liquor store to stop selling the beverage that is often referred to as "liquid crack" and "cocaine in a can." Four Loko was linked to a recent incident involving nine Central Washington University students, some of whom were hospitalized on Oct. 9 for alcohol poisoning, according to a statement by the Washington Attorney General's office. Emmett McDermott, department manager of Liquor Land in Dorchester, said the store...

A northern Kentucky man was found guilty of murder for strangling his wife with an extension cord and rejected defense claims that his statements to police were made under stress prompted by large amounts of caffeine and a lack of sleep. The Campbell County jury deliberated about 1 1/2 hours on Friday before convicting 33-year-old Woody Will Smith in the May 2009 death of Amanda Hornsby-Smith.

New research in the FASEB Journal suggests that manipulation of the brain's own immune cells with IL-6 could lead to reversal of Alzheimer's disease pathologyA breakthrough discovery by scientists from the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, FL, may lead to a new treatment for Alzheimer's Disease that actually removes amyloid plaques—considered a hallmark of the disease—from patients' brains. This discovery, published online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org), is based on the unexpected finding that when the brain's immune cells (microglia) are activated by the interleukin-6 protein (IL-6), they actually remove plaques instead of causing them or making them worse. The research...

There is a good deal of debate about the health effects of caffeine, and whether these effects are primarily positive or negative. Caffeine, particularly in coffee, has been studied closely to determine where it may be of benefit, and where it may cause undesirable effects. Health benefits of caffeine Parkinson's disease Parkinson's is caused by the loss of brain cells that produce a chemical messenger called dopamine. According to a researcher from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, people who drink coffee or consume caffeine regularly have a lower risk of developing Parkinson's disease. The research put forth...

Scientists are reporting new evidence that drinking coffee may help prevent diabetes and that caffeine may be the ingredient largely responsible for this effect. Their findings, among the first animal studies to demonstrate this apparent link, appear in ACS' bi-weekly Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Fumihiko Horio and colleagues note that past studies have suggested that regular coffee drinking may reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes. The disease affects millions in the United States and is on the rise worldwide. However, little of that evidence comes from studies on lab animals used to do research that cannot be...

Dec. 14, 2009 -- Every cup of coffee a person drinks per day may lower the risk of diabetes by 7%. A new review of research on the link between lifestyle factors, like coffee and tea consumption, and diabetes risk suggests that drinking regular or decaffeinated coffee and tea all lower the risk of type 2 diabetes. Researchers say the number of people with type 2 diabetes is expected to increase by 65% by 2025, reaching an estimated 380 million people worldwide. “Despite considerable research attention, the role of specific dietary and lifestyle factors remains uncertain, although obesity and physical...

Drinking coffee does not sober you up – and may actually further impair your judgement, new research suggests. The combination of alcohol and caffeine produces a potentially lethal mix that just makes it harder to realise you are actually drunk in the first place. And the study published in Behavioural Neuroscience suggests popular caffeinated energy drinks could also raise risks from intoxication rather than lessen them. "The myth about coffee's sobering powers is particularly important to debunk because the co-use of caffeine and alcohol could actually lead to poor decisions with disastrous outcomes. "People who have consumed only alcohol, who...

Watertown, MA—Scientists at Boston Biomedical Research Institute (BBRI) and the University of Pennsylvania have found that combining two chemicals, one of which is the green tea component EGCG, can prevent and destroy a variety of protein structures known as amyloids. Amyloids are the primary culprits in fatal brain disorders such as Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and Parkinson's diseases. Their study, published in the current issue of Nature Chemical Biology (December 2009), may ultimately contribute to future therapies for these diseases. "These findings are significant because it is the first time a combination of specific chemicals has successfully destroyed diverse forms of amyloids...

STOCKHOLM — Middle-aged people who drink moderate amounts of coffee significantly reduce their risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, a study by Finnish and Swedish researchers showed Thursday. "Middle-aged people who drank between three and five cups of coffee a day lowered their risk of developing dementia and Alzheimer's disease by between 60 and 65 percent later in life," said lead researcher on the project, Miia Kivipelto, a professor at the University of Kuopio in Finland and at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. The study, which was also conducted in cooperation with the National Public Health Institute in Helsinki and which...

SIX cups of coffee - that's the State Government antidote to sleep-deprived doctors killing and harming their patients in a haze of exhaustion. The astonishing remedy forms part of Queensland Health's new doctor fatigue policy, currently being rolled out in public hospitals. The Courier-Mail yesterday reported the confessions of junior surgeons and medics whose exhaustion-induced errors had killed or hurt patients during "on-call" shifts of 30 to 80 hours. But a guidelines document underpinning QH's Fatigue Risk Management System claims "solutions such as 'we need more staff' might not be achievable or effective in managing a fatigue risk."

In experiments with lab mice especially bred to develop symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, University of South Florida (USF) researchers at the Florida Alzheimer's Disease Research Center ADRC gave the aged animals the equivalent of the caffeine in five cups of coffee a day. The results? Their severe memory impairment was reversed. This study, along with other AD research by the same group of scientists, was just published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease. Both studies show that caffeine significantly decreased abnormal levels of beta amyloid (the protein linked to AD) in both the brains and blood of lab rodents who...

Enlarge Caffeine treatment removed the beta amyloid plaques from the brains of the Alzheimer's mice. Credit: Photo courtesy of Florida Alzheimer's Disease Research Center Coffee drinkers may have another reason to pour that extra cup. When aged mice bred to develop symptoms of Alzheimer's disease were given caffeine - the equivalent of five cups of coffee a day - their memory impairment was reversed, report University of South Florida researchers at the Florida Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. Back-to-back studies published online today in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, show caffeine significantly decreased abnormal levels of the protein linked to...

Michael Jackson is setting out on a concert tour after a twelve year hiatus. Nothing unusual about that...until you take a look at who's helping him put the tour together! NOTE: The author of this comic requests that you visit his web site and please refrain from copying the cartoon within this thread! Thank you very much!

Have a Coke and a tax Once government starts down the "sin tax" road, it is very hard to stop. Everyone loves to tax a product they do not use. When revenues run low, alcohol and cigarettes are always at the top of the new tax list. Some municipalities have even proposed a "fat" tax. Now, a legislator in Utah has proposed a tax on caffeine. Be careful whose sin you tax. Yours may be next. Let's tax caffeine, legislator argues

Hearing voices when nobody is around or seeing things that aren't there? Too much caffeine could be to blame, British researchers reported on Wednesday. Their study found that students who consumed more than the equivalent of seven cups of instant coffee a day were three times more likely to have had these kinds of hallucinations compared to people on a single daily cup.

Wow! I never knew spiders would hve these reactions.Link

A strong cup of coffee has a greater effect on men than women, research shows. In a study on 668 healthy volunteers, an espresso pepped up men after just 10 minutes. Women also became more alert after the beverage, but less so. The University of Barcelona researchers say some of this effect might be psychological because decaffeinated coffee also worked to some extent. Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry reports the work. The volunteers were asked to drink either a classic espresso containing 100mg of caffeine or a decaffeinated espresso containing 5mg of caffeine. Then the researchers looked for changes...

A new study published online in The FASEB Journal shows that the equivalent of one dose of caffeine (just two cups of coffee) ingested during pregnancy may be enough to affect fetal heart development and then reduce heart function over the entire lifespan of the child. In addition, the researchers also found that this relatively minimal amount of exposure may lead to higher body fat among males, when compared to those who were not exposed to caffeine. Although the study was in mice, the biological cause and effect described in the research paper is plausible in humans.

When Howard D. Schultz in 1985 founded the company that would become the wildly successful Starbucks chain, no financial adviser had to tell him that coffee was America’s leading beverage and caffeine its most widely used drug. The millions of customers who flock to Starbucks to order a double espresso, latte or coffee grande attest daily to his assessment of American passions. Although the company might have overestimated consumer willingness to spend up to $4 for a cup of coffee — it recently announced that it would close hundreds of underperforming stores — scores of imitators that now sell coffee,...

WASHINGTON—Anheuser-Busch will remove the caffeine, guarana, and ginseng from its flavored malt beverages Tilt and Bud Extra, and is calling on its competitors in the industry to similarly stop making pre-packaged caffeinated alcohol beverages. The move comes as part of agreements reached with the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest(CSPI), which in February threatened to file suit against the company over the drinks, and a group of 11 state Attorneys General, which has separately been investigating the company. Miller Brewing Co., which markets caffeinated alcoholic drinks under the brand name Sparks, is not a party to the settlement...

NJ has thousands of far more pressing problems,but... a NJ Assemblyman wants to ban the sale of high-caffeine beverages to "underage" consumers. It never stops !!!

A daily dose of caffeine blocks the disruptive effects of high cholesterol that scientists have linked to Alzheimer's disease. A study in the open access publication, Journal of Neuroinflammation revealed that caffeine equivalent to just one cup of coffee a day could protect the blood-brain barrier (BBB) from damage that occurred with a high-fat diet. The BBB protects the central nervous system from the rest of the body's circulation, providing the brain with its own regulated microenvironment. Previous studies have shown that high levels of cholesterol break down the BBB which can then no longer protect the central nervous system...

Coffee may cut the risk of dementia by blocking the damage cholesterol can inflict on the body, research suggests. The drink has already been linked to a lower risk of Alzheimer's Disease, and a study by a US team for the Journal of Neuroinflammation may explain why. A vital barrier between the brain and the main blood supply of rabbits fed a fat-rich diet was protected in those given a caffeine supplement. UK experts said it was the "best evidence yet" of coffee's benefits. The "blood brain barrier" is a filter which protects the central nervous system from potentially harmful...

Too much caffeine during pregnancy may increase the risk of miscarriage, a new study says, and the authors suggest that pregnant women may want to reduce their intake or cut it out entirely. Many obstetricians already advise women to limit caffeine, though the subject has long been contentious, with conflicting studies, fuzzy data and various recommendations given over the years. The new study, being published Monday in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, finds that pregnant women who consume 200 milligrams or more of caffeine a day — the amount in 10 ounces of coffee or 25 ounces of tea...

Note: This commentary was delivered by PFM President Mark Earley. From Starbucks, to Red Bull, to No-Doz, Americans are showing signs of addiction to caffeine. Sixty percent of us drink a cup of coffee a day. On average we will drink 52 gallons of soda this year. And Starbucks—they get a whopping $5.3 billion of our collective dough. Whether we are chemically stimulating because we do not get enough sleep, or whether the caffeine itself is depriving us of precious rest, we are also sleeping less than ever before. Americans get an average of six and a half hours of...

Associated Press A state advisory board on Monday called for a study to determine if sodas and energy drinks containing caffeine pose a risk to pregnant women. The review could lead to warning labels on the drinks under Proposition 65, a 1986 ballot measure that requires the state to identify chemicals that could cause cancer or birth defects. "If I were a pregnant woman or a woman thinking about being pregnant, I would want to know, should I be avoiding caffeine?" said Renee Sharp, a senior analyst with the Environmental Working Group, an environmental research organization that's based in Washington...

"New research finds that high doses of caffeine therapy given to babies born very early -- an average of 27 weeks gestation -- reduced their risk of serious disabilities, including cerebral palsy."

Kamyra L. Harding never gives her son coffee or soda, and rarely opts for treats such as chocolate cupcakes. But about twice a month, the mom does give in to her 4-year-old son Garrett David Brand’s request for a Chai tea latte from Starbucks. “People here already know us,” Harding said on a recent visit to a Starbucks on New York's Upper West Side. “They know we want extra milk.” Garrett has been a regular Starbucks customer since “he could hold a cup,” his mother says. Now when he passes a Starbucks he says, “I want to buy this tea.”...

A teenager was rushed to hospital after overdosing on espresso coffee. The 17-year-old downed seven double espresso coffees while working in the family's sandwich shop and was left "burning up and hyperventilating". Student Jasmine Willis, who thought the coffees were single measures, said the effects of the espresso were so severe her actions left customers bewildered. She said she started laughing and crying for no reason while serving them, but after being sent home by her father Gary the medical symptoms started. She developed a fever at home and was unable to breathe properly. Jasmine, of Stanley, County Durham, was...

A teenager was rushed to hospital after overdosing on espresso coffee. The 17-year-old downed seven double espresso coffees while working in the family's sandwich shop and was left "burning up and hyperventilating". Student Jasmine Willis, who thought the coffees were single measures, said the effects of the espresso were so severe her actions left customers bewildered. She said she started laughing and crying for no reason while serving them, but after being sent home by her father Gary the medical symptoms started. She developed a fever at home and was unable to breathe properly.

Inventors have created a soap infused with caffeine which helps users wake up in the morning. The soap, called Shower Shock, supplies the caffeine equivalent of two cups of coffee per wash with the stimulant absorbed naturally through the skin, manufacturers say. "Tired of waking up and having to wait for your morning (coffee) to brew?" ask the makers, thinkgeek.com. Scented with peppermint oil, each bar is designed to provide a stimulant boost within five minutes.

How much of your favorite energy drink or soda would it take to kill you? Take this quick test and find out:

That cup of coffee just not getting it done anymore? How about a Buzz Donut or a Buzzed Bagel? That's what Doctor Robert Bohannon, a Durham, North Carolina, molecular scientist, has come up with. Bohannon says he's developed a way to add caffeine to baked goods, without the bitter taste of caffeine. Each piece of pastry is the equivalent of about two cups of coffee. While the product is not on the market yet, Bohannon has approached some heavyweight companies, including Krispy Kreme, Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks about carrying it.

It's not unusual for Dee McKinsey to have three cans of Coke before she leaves the house each morning for her job as the regional director of boards and volunteerism at the American Cancer Society in Chicago. "There is nothing better than the feel of Coke on the back of your throat in the morning," said McKinsey, a morning pop drinker since the 1970s, savoring the cold, stinging sensation that coffee drinkers just don't get. But these days, more people are enjoying that chilled morning jolt as they increasingly turn to soft drinks instead of coffee, flaunting mom's no-pop-for-breakfast rule...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The owner of a small coffee company sued Starbucks Corp. (SBUX.O: Quote, Profile, Research) on Monday, claiming the coffee shop's anti-competitive business practices put her store out of business. The suit, which seeks class action status, was filed in Seattle federal court by Penny Stafford, the owner of Belvi Coffee and Tea Exchange Inc. According to court papers, Starbucks violated federal antitrust laws by leasing prime commercial real estate at above-market prices in return for the exclusive right to sell espresso drinks or specialty coffee in those locations. A Starbucks spokeswoman said the Seattle-based company was...

When Christine Drake worked as a Starbucks barista, the Seattle woman with psychiatric disabilities said it was the first time in her life that she "felt a sense of accomplishment." But after two years on the job, a new manager at the Starbucks store at 425 Queen Anne Ave. N. in Seattle allegedly discriminated against Drake, decreased her hours and berated her in front of customers, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Lisa Cox, an EEOC lawyer, said the world's largest coffee retailer ignored Drake's requests for help and violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by not accommodating...

The kids aren’t alright. An epidemic is sweeping the nation as teenagers down the addictive brew by the pint. Underage alcohol consumption? No, coffee. As anti-food industry advocacy groups like Center for Science in the Public Interest sharpen their legal knives against Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX), the media are brewing up alarmist reports on teenage caffeine consumption. CBS’s “Early Show” followed ABC’s lead from two days ago. That network’s June 19 edition of “Good Morning America” presented Starbucks like a drug pusher preying on young addicts. “Coffee has always been considered an adult drink, but today coffee drinkers are much, much...

Sometimes two vices are better than one. Drinking large amounts of coffee protects the livers of people who drink large amounts of alcohol, a new study shows. The results partly explain why so many heavy alcohol drinkers escape cirrhosis of the liver, say the authors. The idea that coffee drinking might benefit alcohol users arose more than a decade ago, when cardiologist Arthur Klatsky and colleagues at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program in Oakland, California, noticed that fewer heavy drinkers were dying of cirrhosis--scarring that hardens the liver--than expected. A study at the time suggested coffee drinking might be...

LOWER BURRELL, Pa. -- A Lower Burrell school student is facing a three-day suspension for sharing gum with a classmate. Jolt chewing gum has caffeine and ginseng. The Lower Burrell school superintendent said consuming and passing out the gum violates the school's drug awareness policy. That's because caffeine is considered a stimulant. Parents told Channel 11 they did not understand the suspension. Resident Elizabeth Grombacher said, "I think it's stupid. Everything's getting too politically correct it's so wrong." "It's probably just like Mountain Dew or something like that. If it's got a lot of caffeine in it and they probably...

While it might seem strange scientists would think to develop dipsticks to measure caffeine, how they're making them is even weirder. How about three llamas and two camels. The animals, both called camelids by scientists, are among the few whose immune systems produce antibodies that are not destroyed by hot coffee. We did not look into who figured that out or why. Anyway, the researchers injected proteins linked to caffeine into the five beasts to elicit an immune response. The animals produced antibodies in their blood that were reactive to caffeine. Then in the lab, these antibodies were found to...

If you want to bring someone around to your way of thinking you should make sure they've got a cup of coffee in their hand, according to research showing that caffeine makes us more open to persuasion. The Australian researchers say a caffeine hit improves our ability to process information and increases the extent to which we listen to and take on board a persuasive message. They tested this by quizzing people about their attitudes to voluntary euthanasia and abortion before and after either the equivalent of about two cups of coffee or a placebo. They were also given a...

Warren Buffett once called the cigarette the perfect product: "It costs a penny to make. Sell it for a dollar. It's addictive." Much the same could be said about coffee today. Even a costly coffee drink -- Starbucks sells its lattes for about $3.50, depending on the location -- consists of little more than a cup of water, a splash of milk, a spoonful of coffee grinds and 30 seconds of labor. Starbucks has managed to turn its customers' craving for caffeine into a $6.4 billion a year business. It already has about 6,000 company-owned coffeehouses and claims to open...

Faith Sullivan of Minneapolis was having a really hard time getting a good night's sleep. For years, she had slept about seven hours a night. Then, in her late 50's, something changed. After going to bed at 10 or 11 p.m., she would wake up around 3 a.m., unable to fall back to sleep. No, neither depression nor hot flashes were disrupting her night's rest. It was caffeine. She never drank caffeinated coffee in the evening, but she often had it as a midafternoon pick-me-up. Though she found it hard to believe that coffee at 4 p.m. could disturb her...

How are coffee, tea and colas decaffeinated? Caffeine occurs naturally in more than 60 plants, including: -the arabica plant, which produces coffee beans-the Theobroma cacao tree, which produces the beans that are the primary ingredient in chocolate. -kola nuts, which many cola drink products are made with -the Thea sinensis plant, whose leaves are used for teasWhen separated from its sources, caffeine is a white, bitter-tasting powder. Several methods are used to remove caffeine from its natural sources: --Methylene chloride processing --Ethyl acetate processing --Carbon dioxide processing --Water processing Methylene chloride is a chemical used as a solvent to extract...

AP MEDICAL WRITER CHICAGO -- Here's a real caffeine jolt - heart attacks might be a risk for coffee drinkers with a common genetic trait that makes caffeine linger in their bodies, a study suggests. Research on more than 4,000 people in Costa Rica found that about half had the trait and were considered "slow caffeine metabolizers." The other half had the opposite trait, which caused their bodies to rapidly break down or metabolize caffeine, and coffee-drinking in this group appeared to reduce heart attack risks. Among slow-metabolizers, those who drank two or more cups of coffee daily were at...

Is the War on Drugs taking aim at that morning cup of java? As crazy as it might sound, some activists would hope so - and they have enlisted the help of various Californian mayors to support their cause. But first, to be more precise, critics aren't specifically after coffee, but rather after caffeine - a "drug" that is included in such products as energy and soft drinks, and some chocolates. It is said that the Chinese Emperor Shen Nung was once boiling some drinking water when leaves from a small bush fell into his pot - to create the...