How do you take your coffee? Me, I like many varieties, although my preferences often depend on the circumstances. At a very fancy coffee shop, I will order a cortado with whole milk or a double macchiato with skim milk (unless it’s hot, in which case, cold brew all day). At home, I make a French press in the morning and work my way through it using foamed almond milk as a dressing. Sometimes I will put cinnamon on top if I feel extra. Unfortunately, none of these variations on a cup of joe will help boost my longevity, apparently.
This is an adapted version of the Inverse Daily newsletter for Monday, June 13, 2022. Subscribe for free and learn something new every day.
This coffee hack could improve your gut health and make you live longer
One’s coffee order might have an effect on long-term health, according to a study published in May in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine. A longitudinal study found that moderate consumption of black or lightly sweetened coffee was associated with a lower risk for death.
Coffee is an incredibly popular daily beverage. One survey found that 66 percent of Americans had at least some coffee in the past day, and the average joe-drinker has more than three cups of the stuff daily. So studying its effects on our health is important.
Researchers found that moderate coffee drinkers (that means decaf, too) showed the lowest risk for mortality. The researchers describe the trend between coffee and mortality risk as a U-shaped curve: Those who consume two to three cups of black or lightly sweetened (with an average of one teaspoon of sugar) coffee per day had the lowest risk of mortality — by up to 30 percent — and derived the most benefits from the drink.
The risk of mortality was highest on the two ends. One end represents those who drink zero coffee and the other end represents those who consume highly modified coffee (with lots of added sugar and dairy).
This study doesn’t necessarily say anything about the effects of artificial sweeteners. In fact, while the study concludes that moderate consumption of unsweetened and sugar-sweetened coffee links to a lower risk of death, the association between artificially sweetened coffee and mortality was “less consistent.” That doesn’t mean more people who drank frappuccinos died, but that no apparent trend emerged.
Pour yourself a cup and dive in.
RHDV2: Symptoms, vaccine for rabbits, and more about the fatal bunny disease in the U.S.
RHDV2, a type of highly fatal rabbit hemorrhagic disease, was detected for the third time in the U.S. in February 2020. Unlike the previous two cases, this one was spreading quickly.
“I hadn’t heard of RHDV2 until the pandemic. They sort of correlated, the two pandemics — the human and the bunny one,” Katherine Filaseta, a rabbit owner based in New York City, tells Inverse. (Filaseta is a friend of the author.)
Lauren Goldberg, a rabbit owner in Portland, tells Inverse, “We were kind of like — this is Covid for rabbits.”
Over the past two years, RHDV2 has spread far and wide to at least 21 states, but a U.S-made vaccine was also approved for the disease last year for most states. Inverse spoke with rabbit owners and veterinarians to share tips and concerns about protecting bunnies from the deadly virus. Here’s everything you need to know about the rabbit disease RHDV2 — a disease every bunny owner should know about, veterinarians say.
“We are extremely concerned about RHDV2,” Michelle Kelly, founder and president of the Los Angeles Rabbit Foundation, tells Inverse.
Does coffee make you poop? A gastroenterologist gets to the bottom of it
A good poop can turn around a bad day, or set the tone for a good one. Often, the day’s first poop follows another quotidian ritual for many: a cup of coffee.
Americans love coffee. In 2020, the National Coffee Association published findings that 7 in 10 Americans drink coffee every week, and of those, 62 percent drink it every day. The average coffee drinker downs just over 3 cups a day.
As many coffee drinkers know, America’s number one beverage can have a strong association with number two. Surprisingly, though, scientists still don’t fully understand this deep bond.
It could just be that coffee is the first thing hitting your stomach, kicking your intestines into gear, says gastroenterologist Sophie Balzora at N.Y.U. Langone Health in New York.
Consuming the first food or drink of the day, even black coffee, can send a message to your brain saying, ‘hey make room for what I’m about to eat and drink,’ Balzora tells Inverse. We make room, by well, getting rid of waste. Yes, pooping.
This message is called the gastrocolic reflex, a physiological response to eating a meal that promotes motility in the lower intestine.
But it’s actually more complicated than just saying yes, coffee is a laxative.
36 years later, the meaning of Ferris Bueller is still hiding in plain sight
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is the definitive Chicago movie. So why is Cameron wearing a Detroit Red Wings jersey? In fact, almost every John Hughes film is set in Chicago, this is the only one where America’s third-largest city is interwoven into the very fabric of the story. It features a Cubs day game at Wrigley Field, a questionable weekday parade in Daley Plaza, moments of introspection at the Art Institute of Chicago and the observation deck of the Willis (then Sears) Tower, and countless other B-roll montages of well-known landmarks.
So why then, in the most Chicago-est of all John Hughes films, does Cameron, played by Alan Ruck, wear that iconic Gordie Howe Detroit Red Wings hockey jersey, a uniform that belonged to the hometown Blackhawks’ longest-reigning rival since the 1920s?
Famously written in just a few days in anticipation of an impending writer’s strike, the plot to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is incredibly simple. Beloved high school senior Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) plays hooky for a day to take in the numerous sights and sounds the Windy City has to offer. He ropes in his cool-girl counterpart Sloane Peterson (Mia Sara) and his despairingly neurotic best friend Cameron Frye. Ferris’s only objectives are to not get caught, have a good time, and keep Cameron from having a nervous breakdown.
When Cameron isn’t saying it out loud, the Detroit Red Wings jersey he wears is constantly reminding us that he doesn’t want to be here.
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- On this day in history: On June 13, 1971, The New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, a seminal moment in journalism and U.S. history — the Pentagon Papers series examined the U.S. involvement in Indochina in the lead-up to and during the Vietnam War.
- Song of the day: “Gimme Shelter,” by The Rolling Stones.
