COFFEE ; THE NEW FEMALE NUTRICEUTICAL

Coffee is probably one of the most common imbibe beverage of all times. I must drink about 2-3 cuppa a day. It is nice to drink. I started when I was small, and have continued since. I need a cuppa to start the day. I hope that it does me some good too.
I just picked up an article from the journal Stroke, by the group from Karolinska Institute, Sweden. Dr Susanna Larssen et al, was studying 30,670 females as part of the Swedish Mammography Study. This study started in 1997, and the subjects were followed for an average of 10.4 years. All the subjects have no history of cardiovascular disease. They all filled in a nutrition questionaire, which include their coffee drinking habits. After follow up for 10 years, there were 1,680 strokes in the group, of which 80-90% were cerebral infarction ans the rest were cerebral hemorrhages. The stroke reduction rate noted was 22-25%. That is not bad. The researchers found that as long as you drink some coffee daily, there was a reduction in the incidence of stroke, after adjusting for confounding factors. It did not quite matter how many cups you drink, as long as it was not more then 5 cups a day. The protection did not get incrementally better, the more you drink.
Please note that this is an observational study, and by no means conclusive. But the simple truth is that if I drink 1-2 cuppa a day, I maybe protected, that speaks for itself.
The why of the observation is not so easy to answer. Much more work needs to be done. Is it the anti-inflammatory effect of the phenolic compounds in coffee, or the so called anti-oxidant effects of coffee, or the increase insulin sensitivity, noted with coffee, no one really knows at the moment, and this surely invites more study.
So, if you like a cuppa, please go on, especially if you are female. I am sure that it works for males too. I am not so sure about de-cafes?