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I would suggest that what most people call a caffeine addiction is actually either a sugar-need, or dehydration…or both in combination. I.e…if you can’t want up until you have your can of Mountain Dew, which has 55mg of caffeine…are probably more needing of sugar and hydration than they are in need of the caffeine.

Anyway…here are a couple decent articles concerning the myths and facts about caffeine, and another about the caffeine content of common drinks.

evan

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Energy Fiend: Caffeine Content of Drinks
http://www.energyfiend.com/the-caffeine-database

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WebMD: Caffeine Myths and Facts
http://www.webmd.com/balance/caffeine-myths-and-facts

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PERSONAL HEALTH:
Sorting Out Coffee’s Contradictions

By JANE E. BRODY
Published: August 5, 2008
New York Times

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, tea and other products laced with caffeine reflect a society determined to run hard on as little sleep as possible.

But as with any product used to excess, consumers often wonder about the health consequences. And researchers readily oblige. Hardly a month goes by without a report that hails coffee, tea or caffeine as healthful or damns them as potential killers.

Can all these often contradictory reports be right? Yes. Coffee and tea, after all, are complex mixtures of chemicals, several of which may independently affect health.

Caffeine Myths

Through the years, the public has been buffeted by much misguided information about caffeine and its most common source, coffee. In March the Center for Science in the Public Interest published a comprehensive appraisal of scientific reports in its Nutrition Action Healthletter. Its findings and those of other research reports follow.

Hydration. It was long thought that caffeinated beverages were diuretics, but studies reviewed last year found that people who consumed drinks with up to 550 milligrams of caffeine produced no more urine than when drinking fluids free of caffeine. Above 575 milligrams, the drug was a diuretic.

So even a Starbucks grande, with 330 milligrams of caffeine, will not send you to a bathroom any sooner than if you drank 16 ounces of pure water. Drinks containing usual doses of caffeine are hydrating and, like water, contribute to the body’s daily water needs.

Heart disease. Heart patients, especially those with high blood pressure, are often told to avoid caffeine, a known stimulant. But an analysis of 10 studies of more than 400,000 people found no increase in heart disease among daily coffee drinkers, whether their coffee came with caffeine or not.

”Contrary to common belief,” concluded cardiologists at the University of California, San Francisco, there is ”little evidence that coffee and/or caffeine in typical dosages increases the risk” of heart attack, sudden death or abnormal heart rhythms.

In fact, among 27,000 women followed for 15 years in the Iowa Women’s Health Study, those who drank one to three cups a day reduced their risk of cardiovascular disease by 24 percent, although this benefit diminished as the quantity of coffee rose.

Hypertension. Caffeine induces a small, temporary rise in blood pressure. But in a study of 155,000 nurses, women who drank coffee with or without caffeine for a decade were no more likely to develop hypertension than noncoffee drinkers. However, a higher risk of hypertension was found from drinking colas. A Johns Hopkins study that followed more than 1,000 men for 33 years found that coffee drinking played little overall role in the development of hypertension.

Cancer. Panic swept this coffee-dependent nation in 1981 when a Harvard study tied the drink to a higher risk of pancreatic cancer. Coffee consumption temporarily plummeted, and the researchers later concluded that perhaps smoking, not coffee, was the culprit.

In an international review of 66 studies last year, scientists found coffee drinking had little if any effect on the risk of developing pancreatic or kidney cancer. In fact, another review suggested that compared with people who do not drink coffee, those who do have half the risk of developing liver cancer.

And a study of 59,000 women in Sweden found no connection between coffee, tea or caffeine consumption and breast cancer.

Bone loss. Though some observational studies have linked caffeinated beverages to bone loss and fractures, human physiological studies have found only a slight reduction in calcium absorption and no effect on calcium excretion, suggesting the observations may reflect a diminished intake of milk-based beverages among coffee and tea drinkers.

Dr. Robert Heaney of Creighton University says that caffeine’s negative effect on calcium can be offset by as little as one or two tablespoons of milk. He advised that coffee and tea drinkers who consume the currently recommended amount of calcium need not worry about caffeine’s effect on their bones.

Weight loss. Here’s a bummer. Although caffeine speeds up metabolism, with 100 milligrams burning an extra 75 to 100 calories a day, no long-term benefit to weight control has been demonstrated. In fact, in a study of more than 58,000 health professionals followed for 12 years, both men and women who increased their caffeine consumption gained more weight than those who didn’t.

Health Benefits

Probably the most important effects of caffeine are its ability to enhance mood and mental and physical performance. At consumption levels up to 200 milligrams (the amount in about 16 ounces of ordinary brewed coffee), consumers report an improved sense of well-being, happiness, energy, alertness and sociability, Roland Griffiths of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine reported, although higher amounts sometimes cause anxiety and stomach upset.

Millions of sleep-deprived Americans depend on caffeine to help them make it through their day and drive safely. The drug improves alertness and reaction time. In the sleep-deprived, it improves memory and the ability to perform complex tasks.

For the active, caffeine enhances endurance in aerobic activities and performance in anaerobic ones, perhaps because it blunts the perception of pain and aids the ability to burn fat for fuel instead of its carbohydrates.

Recent disease-related findings can only add to coffee’s popularity. A review of 13 studies found that people who drank caffeinated coffee, but not decaf, had a 30 percent lower risk of Parkinson’s disease.

Another review found that compared with noncoffee drinkers, people who drank four to six cups of coffee a day, with or without caffeine, had a 28 percent lower risk of Type 2 diabetes. This benefit probably comes from coffee’s antioxidants and chlorogenic acid.

As more and more people get in an electronic social circle, more and more the quality of the communication you have goes down. Slowly, but surely, it became easier for people to just check my ‘status’, as opposed to calling or actually being interested in real life. People who used to call me and ask about life now don’t call at all, but rather check Facebook and leave a little comment there.

So, my conclusion with MySpace and Facebook are that they cheapen communication, and ultimately cheapen relationships. Twitter is essentially running ‘texting’ logs for the web, and ‘texting’ was never considered anything more than cheap communication. So, why would Tweeting be anything more than that?

The ‘drama’ part of this is how I arrived at that conclusion. I wrote a status ‘complaint’ about people writing nonsense statuses or tweets, inside comments, or things that should have been messaged to just one or two people but instead were sent to everyone’s feed. A friend of mine wrote me messages saying that I shouldn’t take social websites so seriously, and that they exist purely for fun. Of course he is one of the people who writes the posts I have a problem with. So, I did a little experiment. I started posting a series of nonsense postings or ones that didn’t have anything to do with me or him. He promptly removed me from his the people who he follows. Apparently still not getting that I was only doing what he was doing to me.

I hadn’t looked into some of the harm noticed by other people and professionals really until now. I’ll list a few articles that I happened to find recently:

Social websites harm children’s brains: Chilling warning to parents from top neuroscientist
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1153583/Social-websites-harm-childrens-brains-Chilling-warning-parents-neuroscientist.html

Social Networking Sites and Social Theory
http://nortonbooks.typepad.com/everydaysociology/2009/03/publicprivate-selves-and-social-theory.html

Bye Bye Facebook
http://suburbanhen.blogspot.com/2009/03/bye-bye-facebook.html

I was talking to a friend of mine that lives in another state, and we were discussing some of the particulars of the nature of friendships, because they know that I’m not a big fan of relationships where all you ever do is ‘catch-up’ with them. I had suggested in the past that such a relationship probably wasn’t really a friendship. So, I went on to defining that distinction more. But better back up more than that for now and start more basic on the subject.

I have a few close friends, and think that to a large degree what the majority of people call ‘friends’ are not really friends at all, but instead fond acquaintances at best to people they just happen to know their name or remember their face. To tackle this notion from a more obvious standpoint…all those people on your Facebook Friends list are not really your friends.

So, first off I know that to many people this comes off as being just flat out presumptuous, and possibly wrong. But there are ways that I believe you can qualify to yourself if you are actually someone’s friends, and if they really are yours.

Test #1: The Commodity Relationship
Certainly being able to depend on people for interests you both share or hobbies is a good thing. However, if the person is the commodity, and not the activity or common interest being the commodity, then you likely aren’t really friends with them. The common interest or hobby is just the door to getting to know that person…the person being the important thing, not really the common interest. If you are only interested in the hobby or activity that is shared, then I would suggest there is not really a friendship there…but more of a commodity relationship, because what that person can do for you, or what activity or interest you are sharing is more important to you than is the person.

Test #2: Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder
The title of this one makes it sound like you’d rather have that person away from you, than you would be around them. But the test I’m after is the question of whether or not you ‘miss’ them when they are not around. Do you miss them being present when you both are not around each other? If life is fine and good regardless of it they are around or not…then you probably aren’t that person’s friend. And if they never miss you, then you are likely not theirs.

Test #3: Catching Up
Anytime you aren’t actually living life together you will need to catch up with the other person. Couples do this all the time, as an example…such as when your spouse asks you about your day at work. This same thing occurs with friendships, and the test is if you have no interest in catching up, don’t want to hear about the mundane things of someone’s day or week (or month or year), and generally dread the catching-up process with that person…then you aren’t their friend. If they have no interest in catching-up with you…they are likely not your friend. Generally if you are only interested in someone when something ‘interesting’ happens with them…then you aren’t likely their friend. This last one is another Facebook pet-peeve of mine…where people only ask what is up with you solely when you post some crazy status update.

Test #4: The “TMI” Test
TMI, or “Too Much Information” is a good test for friendship. Life is a pretty messy thing. No one’s life is perfect to say the least, and everyone has an ordeal going on in their life from time to time with their job, children, other friendships, private topics, spouses, churches, etc. etc. If the other person starts talking about something that would be considered in whatever degree either ‘personal’ or ‘private’, and you don’t want to hear about those things…then you likely aren’t really their friend. To whatever degree you or they claim is ‘too much information’ is likely the degree to which you are not really friends.

So, if you are not familiar with authentic friendships, then you are either thinking in your head that I have no idea what I’m talking about, or you are realizing that perhaps you may have neglected the possibility of close friendships with people or have been acting more out of self-interest than you have out of interest in friendship.

Then I would encourage you to better the relationships you have. Be interested in the other person…look past the common activities you enjoy and acknowledge the good things about the other person. Actively think about the other person’s life, welfare, or interests (the ones that you might not personally be interested in), and think fondly of that person and who they are. Talk to the other person as often as you are able, and let both the interesting and the mundane things in life spark conversation and movement in the relationship to grow closer. Have that conversation about personal things or about the messiness of life…because perhaps you will sharpen each other and better each others’ lives in the process.

There are a lot of people in the world, and we aren’t on the earth for too terribly long. There is more to good relationships than merely a having a spouse. Certainly don’t neglect your spouse, but also don’t neglect the possibility of good and rich friendships with people around you that may be only acquaintances with. Clearly it is easier to have a ton of acquaintances than it is to have even very few authentic friendships (and you likely will only ever really have the few)…but it is certainly worth the effort.

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Someone had posted a comment about the number of ‘friends’ that a person can have, being a number around 120 in their entire ‘circle’. I’m personally not under the illusion that anyone can actually have 120 ‘friends’. Perhaps they can have 120 people that they generally will choose to ‘catch-up’ with in rotation every few years. Anyway, this was a reply to that article and posting about a maximum number of friends a person can actually have:

There probably is. I don’t know what that number is. There are probably only a few people who you can be authentic friends with. Perhaps 2-3 that you can be really really close friends with. That, of course, is part of the reason why I draw the distinction so quickly. Certainly acquaintances are necessary and good, but I would rather spend time fostering the friendships, rather than have a ton of acquaintances.

But again…I’m hoping to address those who can’t possibly imagine ‘missing’ a friend, or those that can’t imagine being more concerned with another person than they are about their own interests…someone who is not their spouse.