Coffee and sunshine

I was thinking the other day, as I continue to wrestle in the throes of procrastination, about what it takes for me to work well, and came to the conclusion that it's coffee and sunshine. I think the idiom is coffee and cigarettes, but, oh well, my lung capacity is shot as it is, and I think coffee and sunshine sounds just as good, if not more poetic. This thought occured, of course, on the first sunny, and my first productive, day after 10 straight days of rain. It was horrible, but when the sun finally returned, so did not only my spirits but also my ability to think coherently.

The coffee might have helped with that too. I have a bad habit. J'ai tendance à oublier à boire du café. Carrément oublier! Hé oui! I told myself at the beginning of grad schoool that I did not want to become one of those people who is completely addicted to coffee and who can't function in the morning without it, or worse who get grouchy without it, so I decided to limit myself to drinking it only when I actually needed it, on busy, work days, so that when in fact I did drink it, it would still have some of its effectiveness and I wouldn't need to keep upping the dose. It was not to become une habitude quotidienne, or worse, a crutch.

That was all well and good, in theory. Le problème, c'est qu'il m'arrive d'oublier à en boire, même quand je devrais ou même quand j'en ai besoin. It's so not part of my habit that weeks can go by in which I'm in such a daze in that regard that I forget to even consider the possiblity that it might wake me up and make me more productive. That's when having one hits me like a ton of bricks. And it's good because it gets me into a new pattern, which I suppose is exactly what I was intending, but is somewhat étrange nonetheless, in and of its unfamiliarity.

That's what happened the other day. I got a double-whammy of coffee and sunshine after having had neither for at least 10 days. Talk about a rush!

And then, speak of the devil, there was this article on Cyberpresse ce matin:

Le café est bon pour la santé, selon une étude norvégienne
Le vendredi 26 mai 2006 - Oslo
Une consommation raisonnable de café contribue à prévenir les maladies cardio-vasculaires ou encore les maladies de Parkinson et d'Alzheimer, suggère une étude de chercheurs norvégiens, parue vendredi sur le site scientifique www.forskning.no.
Les chercheurs ont appuyé leurs travaux sur des données récoltées aux États-Unis auprès de 27 000 femmes âgées: les sujets buvant entre une et trois tasses de café par jour avaient entre 20% et 25% de risques en moins d'être atteints de maladies cardio-vasculaires ou maladies inflammatoires.
Dans cette dernière catégorie, les chercheurs ont inclus le diabète, la maladie de Parkinson, la maladie d'Alzheimer, des maladies pulmonaires, du foie ou rénales.
«Les données suggèrent que les antioxydants peuvent être un facteur de protection contre de nombreuses maladies», a indiqué Lene Frost Andersen, une membre de l'équipe.
Mais les effets positifs du café disparaissent en cas de consommation excessive, à savoir au-delà de cinq tasses par jour.
«Il semblerait qu'il puisse y avoir quelque chose dans le café qui soit nocif, absorbé en grandes quantités», a commenté Rune Blomhoff, un autre chercheur, sans en déterminer l'origine.

So I guess I should be drinking more! It's interesting though that I wasn't totally off about the positive effects not working en cas de consommation excessive. Although I don't think they studied my particular avoidance pattern!

Of course, what's also funny about these things is that there will be a study next week that says the exact opposite. There always is. That's the way medical studies work. They get press for the particular research team that conducts them, thereby making their university happy, and the general public is always left utterly confused from one week to the next, which does though eventually have the positive effect of some people learning simply to live their lives as they see fit and ignoring these "news" releases altogether.

I think it's time to sauter sous la douche, pack up my laptop, and hit the coffee shop to get some work done...