Thursday, January 15, 2009

Coffee Can Be Good Medicine for Asthma, Bronchitis and Allergies!

According to the book Food Your Miracle Medicine by Jean Carper:

“To dilate bronchial tubes, try caffeine...For one thing, coffee drinkers appear to have less asthma. A major study of 72,284 Italians over age fifteen concluded that regular long-term use of coffee, presumably because of caffeine, both reduced the intensity of bronchial attacks and prevented their occurrence. In regular one-cup-a-day consumers, asthma odds dropped 5 percent; for two-cup-a-day drinkers, the odds fell 23 percent, and for drinkers of three or more cups, the risk went down 28 percent...The doctors said the caffeine in three cups of coffee had about the same bronchodilating effect as a standard dose of theophulline.”

The book continues to quote a study in the US by Harvard researcher Scott T. Weiss, M.D., that looked at over 20,000 Americans and found that:
“regular coffee drinkers had about one-third fewer asthma symptoms than non-coffee drinkers. Coffee drinkers were particularly less likely to suffer attacks of wheezing, as well as bronchitis and allergies.”


“One of the commonest and best reputed remedies of asthma is strong coffee” -- Dr. Hyde Salter, Edinburgh Medical Journal, 1859

1 comment:

Scott Supak said...

A few weeks ago, our son had a fall while snowboarding, and pulled some neck muscles. Then, he got the flu, and had terrible pains, which, at the time, a doctor on the phone thought could be serious. So we took him to the emergency room, where they gave him a spinal tap to check for meningitis. He didn't have it, thank goodness, but he did develop a "lumbar puncture headache" which was very severe. The next day, we took him back to the emergency room, where they gave him a 500 mg caffeine drip, which cured the headache. For the next few days, he was instructed to take large doses. Fortunately for me, he doesn't like coffee, so he stayed out of my Kona stash from you, and drank monsters.

My later research revealed that caffeine is the "secret ingredient" in Excedrin, and has been used to treat headaches for years.