My elixir

Not a day begins without me getting up and going right into the kitchen to use the microwave to make myself a cup of hot coffee. There is something about having coffee first thing in the morning other than the fact that it has caffeine to keep us going for the day. Whether you want to feel refreshed or want to rid of that headache you have because of your work or your spouse nagging you to go to Shenandoah or Williamsburg or want to cajole someone by being a personalized barista, a cup of Joe is all that takes to bring you back to life. In any work environment you can see a coffee pot going but you seldom see tea bags made available for tea drinkers. For example, go to any mechanic shop or office kitchen, you would see a coffee pot in place to be used. So you get the idea, coffee is the number one elixir you can have to get yourself going on with your activities in life.


Studies have proved that coffee improves memory, cures bad breath (no wonder all dates start with having a cup of coffee together - I remember my friend having countless coffee episodes in Starbucks while dating) and reverses memory problems. Research suggests that having five cups of coffee a day reverses memory problems seen in Alzheimer’s disease. I would take the choice of five cups a day to brain booster capsules to improve my memory. That would be like killing two birds in one shot - get wired and improve memory at the same time.


Fifty-five mice were researched on to see if the memory improves with the dose of caffeine. I can already see the smile on your face or nodding your head because you think that conducting tests on mice is funny. For those who scorn or joke on the fact that research for human betterness is done on mice - since they are found in plenty and no one would shed a tear if mice were killed in the process and also that it is medically acceptable to do research on mice for something a human will use on a later stage. Mice are the guinea pig for researchers. What is astounding is that an 18-19 month old mouse exhibits the same behavior as a 70-year old man in terms on memory capacity. So after the tests, it was proved that mice with caffeine had an improvement in their memory power, which draws a parallel that if humans start having caffeine (does that mean any caffeine or caffeine from coffee? Hmm… not clear there), it would improve their memory as well.


Don’t be too surprised when you come to know that you are either constipated or having weight problems after a couple of months of helping yourself with this caffeine dose. Anything in excess is converted to fat and is stored in the body for later use (what parts of the body it is stored, only your body decides that) and a known problem of having too much coffee is constipation. You do not need another research documenting what I said before about coffee’s effect. So have your five cups of coffee with no sugar and have more water during the day. If you have five cups, see to it that other intakes are equally compensated to avoid the weight problems. Follow the simple rule that “input is less than the output” for your body.