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Statins, pain, glutamate (relates to leg pain post caffeine?)

The McMaster research team found muscle cells treated with statins released the amino acid called glutamate at much higher levels than muscle cells that were untreated. As glutamate is a potent activator of muscle pain receptors, this release was proposed to trigger the sensation of muscle pain. Thomas Hawke, senior author of the study and a professor in pathology and molecular medicine at McMaster University said: "We found that statins were able to enter the muscle cells and cause oxidative stress. This resulted in the muscle trying to increase its production of antioxidants to combat this stress. The side-effect of this antioxidant production was the release of glutamate out of the muscle cells."

Habitual tea drinking modulates brain efficiency: Evidence from brain connectivity evaluation -- ScienceDaily

Although individual constituents of tea have been related to the roles of maintaining cognitive abilities and preventing cognitive decline, a study with behavioural and neurophysiological measures showed that there was a degraded effect or no effect when a constituent was administered alone and a significant effect was observed only when constituents were combined. The superior effect of the constituent combination was also demonstrated in a comparative experiment that suggested that tea itself should be administered instead of tea extracts; a review of tea effects on the prevention of Alzheimers disease, found that the neuroprotective role of herbal tea was apparent in eight out of nine studies.

The military’s obsession with energy drinks is contributing to PTSD, study finds

What the authors found was that over the course of the month leading up to the survey, more than 75 percent of soldiers consumed energy drinks. More surprising, however, was that 16 percent “of soldiers in this study reported continuing to consume two or more energy drinks per day in the post-deployment period," the authors wrote. High energy drink use, which was classified as consuming two or more drinks per day, was significantly associated with those survey respondents who reported mental health problems, anger-related behaviors and fatigue, the authors found. Those consuming less than one energy drink per week reported these symptoms at a significantly lower rate.

Liberals do drink more lattes, but maybe not for the reasons you think -- ScienceDaily

In fact, only 16% of liberals, 11% of moderates, and 9% of conservatives prefer lattes. In exploring why liberals show a stronger preference for lattes, the researchers considered numerous factors, including the availability of lattes in one's local area, household income, and gender. Although all of these were predictors of latte drinking, none of them explained the relationship between lattes and liberals. However, latte drinkers' attitudes toward globalization proved most meaningful in explaining why liberals are more likely to drink lattes.

"Caffeine helps meetings!" or "coffee addicts function badly without coffee?"

Researchers found that people gave more positive reviews for their group's performance on a task -- and their own contribution -- if they drank caffeinated coffee beforehand. A second study showed that people talked more in a group setting under the influence of caffeinated coffee -- but they also were more on-topic than those who drank decaf. Coffee seems to work its magic in teams by making people more alert, said Amit Singh, co-author of the study and a doctoral student in marketing at The Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business. "We found that increased alertness was what led to the positive results for team performance," Singh said. "Not surprisingly, people who drank caffeinated coffee tended to be more alert." Singh conducted the study with Vasu Unnava and H. Rao Unnava, both formerly at Ohio State and now with the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Davis. The study appears online in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. While many studies have looked at how caffeine affects individual performance, this is the first to examine the impact it has on teams, Singh said. The first study involved 72 undergraduate students who said they were coffee drinkers. They were instructed not to drink coffee before the experiment. Half of them first participated in what they were told was a coffee-tasting task. They were split into groups of five. After drinking a cup of coffee and rating its flavor, they were given 30 minutes of filler tasks to give the caffeine a chance to kick in. The other half of the participants did the coffee tasting at the end of the experiment.

Coffee affects cannabis and steroid systems -- ScienceDaily

Blood metabolites of the endocannabinoid system decreased with coffee consumption, particularly with eight cups per day, the study found. The endocannabinoid metabolic pathway is an important regulator of our stress response, Cornelis said, and some endocannabinoids decrease in the presence of chronic stress. "The increased coffee consumption over the two-month span of the trial may have created enough stress to trigger a decrease in metabolites in this system," she said. "It could be our bodies' adaptation to try to get stress levels back to equilibrium." The endocannabinoid system also regulates a wide range of functions: cognition, blood pressure, immunity, addiction, sleep, appetite, energy and glucose metabolism.

Stairs are the new stimulants

"We found, in both the caffeine and the placebo conditions, that there was not much change in how they felt," said Patrick J. O'Connor, a professor in the department of kinesiology who co-authored the study with former graduate student Derek Randolph. "But with exercise they did feel more energetic and vigorous. It was a temporary feeling, felt immediately after the exercise, but with the 50 milligrams of caffeine, we didn't get as big an effect."