New and Experienced Climbers over 50 #39

Idaho Bob wrote:

I'm hooked on latte in the morning and, on occasion, espresso after dinner.  Grind the beans using a Breville burr grinder, using a good burr grinder does make a difference.   By far my favorite beans are from Oso Negro in Nelson, BC. Prefer the "Prince of Darkness".  Dawson Taylor in Boise also roasts some fine beans.  

When camping  or traveling where espresso is not available, we use Starbucks Vias, the Italian Roast, but it's a poor second choice.  

My only ritual is using a cup from Mexico, showing "Pedro" sleeping under a cactus.  He's been my early morning companion for years.

Huh.  I'm really glad I asked this question!  I hope there are more answers.  I have not heard of Oso Negro.  I don't know what kind of grinder I have... I'll check.  It really makes a difference?  

Coffee (and iron) have always been my 'power herbs'.  I used to try to wean from my one daily cup now and then... but then thought, WHY?  It's too good for me.  I love it.  And just like chocolate, it turns out to be good for you.  :-) 

Bad girl signing in here -- this time it's about coffee. For years I ground the beans -- from our local Brewing Market until the day I got to the cash register and it was $30 for two bags and after that supermarket or online, any brand but Starbucks. Then, two summers ago, when our kitchen floor was being refinished and I couldn't use the kitchen, I started buying cans of La Colombe flavored latte. I thought I'd go back to brewing my own coffee by winter. Didn't happen. The Virtuoso and Cuisinart are gathering dust and the bags of beans are probably tasteless by now.    

I used to laugh at the people who drank coffee all the time.  Now I am one of them, especially when I am trying to cut weight.  It gives me a no- calorie treat.

Buck Rogers wrote:

I looked at the first post on that thread, immediately decided I had no interest in clicking on the video, and departed.

@Buck: your query to Al "what have you climbed in the Valley" prompted me to look at my Valley guidebook and take a trip down memory lane. 150 routes - not a lot I'm sure compared to many but so many good memories of the people I was with.  As to the routes, some are etched clearly in my memory, others I cannot even remember, others were repeated often over the years. The quality of so many were so high. Great place to go but my vague recollection is... not a lot of great routes under 5.8? Maybe I just didn't do them. I've never done Snake Dike and never had an interest in it...

Wow… fast moving topics this morning!

Daniel I was going to admonish you for not providing a link- but on second thought- it’s not needed. My thoughts on guided alpine climbing is this: If you need a guide to get you “up” you didn’t really “climb” it. You might as well be a piece of freight, you paid professional freight haulers to deliver a package to a difficult location. I know professionals who deliver freight- to them it’s a job and all they wish is for the job to be over so they can go climbing with friends. Enough of that topic.

Carl….. really? Allow me to quote one of the lines from one of my favorite movies. “So tell me,  what does all that shit on your face do for you?”

Lori…. Sorry you’re feeling poorly. Have you ever considered that one needs a certain amount of “toxic” elements to attain that healthy glow we all seek? /s

Camp 4 daze…. I showed up in 74/75. The Stoneman riot was history. A unwritten truce was in effect. It was like this. You climbers stay over there, don’t cause trouble for the Visitors and we will leave you alone. The truce held till 79 or so.
I was fortunate to be a climber and I learned a thing or three about the sport. The most valuable lesson I learned was from “The Bird” - “never turn around easily- you will regret it later” 

Nick…… good for you for having the life vest on. You probably won’t need it but one never knows.

OLH …. Nice move to “set you up” - do you have tenants? Tinder account? Monster 4X4? Have fun, you’ve earned it.

Getting ready to head back into the Sierra- this is the time.

Later all 

Buck Rogers wrote:

 West Point has guide-level climbing instructors on staff...

How do you know that you are talking with an AMGA guide?

They’ll tell you.

I'm reading 'Turn to Stone' by Emily Weinstein. It's a very enjoyable read, much better that I expected it to be.

You would especially enjoy it Lori.

Idaho Bob wrote:

I'm hooked on latte in the morning and, on occasion, espresso after dinner.  Grind the beans using a Breville burr grinder, using a good burr grinder does make a difference.   By far my favorite beans are from Oso Negro in Nelson, BC. Prefer the "Prince of Darkness".  Dawson Taylor in Boise also roasts some fine beans.  

When camping  or traveling where espresso is not available, we use Starbucks Vias, the Italian Roast, but it's a poor second choice.  

My only ritual is using a cup from Mexico, showing "Pedro" sleeping under a cactus.  He's been my early morning companion for years.

It's not difficult to roast coffee beans; I used to do it. If you like coffee a lot, it's worth a try.

A pleasant day with old friends. 

1. Ward Smith wrote:

I used to laugh at the people who drank coffee all the time.  Now I am one of them, especially when I am trying to cut weight.  It gives me a no- calorie treat.

It’s about the healthiest thing you can put in your body. Too bad I can’t stand the smell/flavor.

Not sure where you came up with coffee being the healthyiest thing you can put your body.. I will take water and spinach please. Coffee makes me feel like shit..

Lots of activity in this thread all of a sudden!

Daniel: I was kind of following that thread, but lost interest. I'll go back and take another look. I think guiding ethics is a subcategory of professional ethics. Not everyone is going to maintain a high ethical standard, so you're going to find some professionals doing things that seem questionable (unprofessional) to you. In the legal profession, we have ambulance chasers. As long as these questionable things are legal, they will "get away" with it. This is the way of the world. I do feel that having an ethical code beyond "do what is legal" is important, but clearly not everyone does.

Lori: I grind the beans and do a pour over with a Hario ceramic dripper and a paper filter. I used to love a dark roast, but now I tend to buy lighter roasts. Note: I actually grind the beans using an ancient Krups electric grinder, and I grind enough for 2-3 days at a time; I can't tell the difference between fresh-ground and a-few-days-old-ground. Someone else mentioned VIA packets. That's what I use when I can't make fresh coffee. I will dump them in cold water to get my caffeine fix. FWIW I don't think coffee is healthy, and I sometimes think about quitting.

I'm still training for my lofty and far-off Henderson Ridge goal. Today I managed about 700 feet of elevation gain weighted with a ~20 lb pack for two hours of hiking. It was a nice day. Here I was hiking up towards Sky Top -

Lori Milas wrote:

Carl, this explains a lot! But of course we knew that about you.  What about tattoos… have we got some of those?

Yeah I have a lot of tattts, all rubbish.  My most recent ones are stars on my fingers.  

Guy Keesee wrote:

Carl….. really? Allow me to quote one of the lines from one of my favorite movies. “So tell me,  what does all that shit on your face do for you?”

Pulp Fiction? 

"Is she the one with all the shit in her face?"

"No, that's my wife"

Nick Goldsmith wrote:

Not sure where you came up with coffee being the healthyiest thing you can put your body.. I will take water and spinach please. Coffee makes me feel like shit..

Coffee lowers all cause mortality, heart disease, stroke, risk of diabetes, Parkinson's, liver disease, some types of cancer, etc…and improves athletic performance.

I love fruits and veggies, but spinach pales in comparison. And water is essential, but I’m not aware of any studies linking it to specific health outcomes.

Tim K wrote:

Apologies for chiming in here, but pretty sure coffee doesn't do anything of those things. Correlation studies I believe.

Edit:  ...and I drink a shit ton of coffee.

I drink more than that. Maybe thats the trick?

Tim K wrote:

Apologies for chiming in here, but pretty sure coffee doesn't do anything of those things. Correlation studies I believe.

Edit:  ...and I drink a shit ton of coffee.

Pretty much the entirety of nutrition literature is correlative, but that doesn’t negate the healthfulness of coffee.

Here’s one on all cause mortality - it shows nearly linear reduction in all cause mortality, all the way up to 6 cups/day!

Inverse associations were observed for deaths due to heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, injuries and accidents, diabetes, and infections, but not for deaths due to cancer. Results were similar in subgroups, including persons who had never smoked and persons who reported very good to excellent health at baseline.

Tim K wrote:

Apologies for chiming in here, but pretty sure coffee doesn't do anything of those things. Correlation studies I believe.

Edit:  ...and I drink a shit ton of coffee.

Actually, I was curious so Googled 'health benefits of coffee academic papers australia meta analysis' and found this, so there may be something in that statement:

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/17/15/2558

Tim K wrote:

Thanks for the link...and I don't want to go too far into the weeds here, but correlation studies are great precursors for causation studies. 

Take the studies that showed the "health" benefits from a glass of red wine per day. We now know that alcohol in even moderate amounts shows an increase in most cancers associated with entirety of gi. Even those studies weren't perfect as they made the assumption that cause is that alcohol is converted to acetylaldehyde in parietal (edit: epithelial. Mistook parietal to be any gi cell) cells and acetylaldehyde is known carcinogen.

...but from that paper:

"Whether this was a causal or associational finding cannot be determined from our data."

Don't get me wrong it appears coffee is good, I just won't say it is.

Sorry for nitpicking!

Again, that's nutrition science - you're not gonna find any study which directly shows food/beverage/nutrient x definitively causes anything. Our diet is too diverse, and most diseases take years-decades to develop. The studies are usually observational and population based, not prospective, placebo-controlled, double blind, randomized controlled trials. Even if studies were the latter design (the gold standard in clinical medicine), causation would not be proven.

But if it makes you happy, coffee is associated with more positive health outcomes than any other single food or drink I can think of. The evidence overwhelmingly supports a salutary role from moderate coffee consumption. Per everyone's favorite source, Chat GPT: 

Overall, a substantial body of observational evidence links moderate coffee consumption with a variety of potentially beneficial health outcomes. Some highlights:

All‑cause mortality & cardiovascular health

• An umbrella review covering ~201 meta‑analyses (67 unique health outcomes) found that coffee consumption was more often associated with benefits than harms, across exposures of “any vs none”, “high vs low”, and “one extra cup a day.” 

• For example, in that review: compared to none, ~3‑4 cups/day was associated with ~17 % lower risk of all‑cause mortality (RR≈0.83, 95% CI 0.79‑0.88) and ~19 % lower risk of cardiovascular mortality (RR≈0.81, 0.72‑0.90). 

• A dose‑response meta‑analysis found that up to ~4 cups/day of coffee was associated with lower all‑cause mortality (RR ≈ 0.86) and lower CVD mortality (RR ≈ 0.85) compared to lowest category; beyond ~4 cups there was no additional lowering of risk. 

• Studies in people with diabetes show higher coffee consumption was associated with lower all‑cause mortality (HR 0.82) and lower CHD mortality (HR ~0.66) in meta‑analysis of prospective studies. 

• Mechanistic reviews suggest coffee’s bioactive compounds (caffeine, polyphenols, chlorogenic acids, diterpenes) may reduce inflammation, improve insulin sensitivity, improve vascular function, thereby improving cardiometabolic health. 

Metabolic disease / type 2 diabetes

• Several meta‑analyses show habitual coffee consumption is associated with lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes. 

• For example, one narrative review found up to ~400 mg/day caffeine (≈1‑4 cups) “safe” and coffee “may contribute to the prevention of inflammatory and oxidative stress–related diseases … such as … type 2 diabetes.” 

Liver, neurological disease, some cancers

• Coffee intake is associated with lower risk of certain liver outcomes (e.g., cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma) in epidemiologic studies. 

• It is also associated with lower risk of some neurological diseases (e.g., Parkinson’s disease) in umbrella review data. 

• Some observational evidence shows lower incidence of certain cancers (endometrial, colorectal, prostate, liver) with higher coffee intake. 

Summary pattern

In short: moderate coffee consumption (~3–5 cups/day) appears to be associated, in many (though not all) observational studies, with lower risk of various adverse outcomes including all‑cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, certain cancers and liver disease.

ETA Alcohol is a whole 'nother can of worms. It definitely increases risk of several (GI) cancers, but at the same time, moderate consumption (like 1-2 servings/day, max) decreases cardiovascular risk. Since more people die of heart attacks/heart failure/strokes than cancer, on a population level, there is a net mortality benefit to moderate consumption. The issue is, people have trouble with moderation, and there are other ways to improve CV health without cancer/cirrhosis/addiction risk, so the WHO issued the "no amount of alcohol is safe" declaration a couple years ago.