And to muddle things even further, yet another review has been published in the Cochrane Library, suggesting that St. John’s wort extracts tested in trials

• are superior to placebo in patients with major depression;
• are similarly effective as standard antidepressants;
• and have fewer side effects than standard antidepressants.

I’m sure there  are all sorts of preparations of varying sorts and purities out in the market. Afterall, St. John’s wort is considered to be the”natural prozac“. Note however, that just because something is of plant origin does not mean it’s totally safe. Please, please, do not self-medicate and consult your doctor, particularly if you are taking any other medications.

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St. John’s Wort as Anti-Depressant

A small study indicates that females get a perk-up from drinking coffee whether they are habitual drinkers or “caffeine-naïve”.

“The take-home message for women is that whether you are hooked on caffeine or not, if you need a boost coffee improves your mental alertness and can have a calming affect on your heart rate,” said Michael Kennedy, a professor in exercise physiology in the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation, lead author on the study. “In addition, a large coffee has more than enough caffeine to see these changes.”

Kennedy and a team of students looked at how 10 women who drank caffeine daily and 10 caffeine-naïve women who drank less than two servings per week were affected by measuring heart rate, blood pressure, alertness and the ability to perform a tough mental test after consuming a 350-millilitre-sized coffee. The study subjects were aged 18 to 37.

Cool. Except that I can’t get over the fact that these conclusions were based from a grand total of 20 test subjects. Hardly convincing, eh?

Photo Credit: garryknight via Flickr

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Coffee Perks for Women?

The researchers noted a significant inverse association between coffee drinking and the risk of primary liver cancer. Participants in the survey who drank 0-1 cup, 2-3 cups, 4-5 cups, 6-7 cups, and 8 or more cups per day. After a median follow-up period of 19.3 years, the study showed that the multivariable hazards ratio of liver cancer dropped for each group that drank more coffee. It fell from 1.00, to .66, to .44, to .38 to .32 respectively.

However, the biological mechanisms behind the association of coffee consumption with the risk of liver cancer are not known, and authors admit that the link between coffee consumption and liver cancer may not be causal. In other words, due to the method of study used (based on epidemiological data rather than experimental), one cannot conclude that drinking more coffee can directly prevent liver cancer.

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Could Coffee Lower Liver Cancer Risks?

Women consuming two to three cups of caffeinated coffee per day had a 25 percent lower risk of death from heart disease during the follow-up period (which lasted from 1980 to 2004 and involved 84,214 women) as compared with non-consumers, and an 18 percent lower risk of death caused by something other than cancer or heart disease as compared with non-consumers during follow-up.

Before you use this to justify your coffee “addiction” to that java brew, take note that caffeine does have adverse effects, too. You might therefore be better off drinking decaf as their data indicates that even drinking decaffeinated coffee produces pretty much the same result (lower death risks). It probably won’t wake you up though!

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Cheat Death by Drinking Coffee