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Protective Effects against Asthma

People sitting in a coffee bar.

I was just hav­ing my first cup of cof­fee in the morn­ing, when an arti­cle on sprudge.com popped up in my feed read­er. As an asth­mat­ic and cof­fee enthu­si­ast it nat­u­ral­ly caught my attention.

It reports about a study by med­ical pro­fes­sion­als from Korea’s Hal­lym Uni­ver­si­ty, Hanyang Uni­ver­si­ty, and Kang­dong Sacred Heart Hos­pi­tal, with research find­ing that mod­er­ate cof­fee con­sump­tion can low­er the fre­quen­cy of symp­toms asso­ci­at­ed with asthma.

«One expla­na­tion prof­fered for the phe­nom­e­na is the pres­ence of Methylx­an­thines in cof­fee. Methylx­an­thines are a group of nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring com­pounds that can be found in cof­fee, tea, and choco­late that act as weak bron­chodila­tors, pro­vid­ing ‹pro­tec­tive effects against asth­ma.› Caf­feine is a Methylx­an­thine, but is not the only one present in cof­fee. In essence, cof­fee acts as a very, very low dose asth­ma inhaler.»

As might be expect­ed from this quote, the effects of cof­fee would not be use­ful in treat­ing an asth­ma attack— cof­fee is more pre­ven­ta­tive than treat­ment. But in addi­tion, «caf­feine has sev­er­al ther­a­peu­tic effects that also reduces res­pi­ra­to­ry mus­cle fatigue». So all in all, good news, don’t you think?

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