Pour myself a cup of ambition

♫♫ And yawn and stretch and try to come to life ... ♫♫

Hey folks, quick note—

I'm rearranging the schedule this week for reasons I'll explain. In short, I'd planned to run the latest "Life Story Magic" edition today, with a health-and-wellness story tomorrow, and our normal Free for ALL Friday edition on ... well, Friday.

But I was traveling the last few days to attend a funeral -- the mother of my best friend, whom I've known for more than 35 years, and who has made an appearance in this newsletter once or twice before.

(Details here; pray for my friend's mom and his family if you're the praying type.)

Anyway, the result is that I'm writing the first draft of today's newsletter in the parking lot of a Dunkin' [Donuts] south of Hartford while waiting for interminable Connecticut traffic to subside. So, we'll switch it up:

• Today -- Health-and-wellness today (because it's already finished),

• Free for ALL -- tomorrow (despite the name)

• Life Story Magic on Friday.

This means if you still want to chime in on this week's question (now for Friday) -- "Have you changed your mind about faith or religion over the years? If so, how?" -- you still have time; just answer in the comments here or call (762) 250-5433.

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Thank you Dolly

As it happens, today's newsletter also opens in the parking lot of a Connecticut Dunkin' [Donuts], only about 30 years ago.

It's about what I remember doing on the morning of my very first day of work, long ago, just after college.

In short, I had it in my mind that Serious Adults Who Work in Offices and Want to Be Writers should drink coffee.

I suppose I was inspired by seeing my father drink coffee every morning, or the 80 million TV commercials I’d seen by then, or even by the opening lyrics to Dolly Parton’s theme song to the 1980 movie 9 to 5.

Regardless, I pulled into the drive-through of Dunkin' [Donuts] in my 1988 Nissan Sentra that morning and ordered a small black coffee.

I remember thinking that since this might be a career-long routine, it was good that I started out drinking it without dairy or sugar.

As oddly specific as that story is, I think a lot of people have similar ones.

In fact, the National Coffee Association says 63 percent of Americans drink coffee every day, and that the vast majority of them (well over 80 percent) drink it either with breakfast or later in the morning.

All of which means that a new study out of Tulane University about the health benefits of drinking coffee in the morning (as opposed to any other time of the day) is especially apt.

Writing in European Heart Journal, researchers said they studied the coffee consumption habits of 40,725 Americans who were included in the 19-year-long U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

By charting how much coffee each respondent said they drank and what times of day they drank it, the researchers were able to link their habits to records on whether they were still alive at the end of the study period (and if they’d died, what the cause of death was).

The takeaways were as eye-opening as morning joe:

First, about 48 percent of those surveyed said they didn’t drink coffee at all, while 36 percent described themselves as morning coffee drinkers, and the remaining 16 percent drank throughout the day.

Second, when they compared the outcomes of the habitual coffee drinkers with the non-coffee drinkers, those who drank coffee were 16 percent less likely to have died of any cause throughout the study period, and 31 percent less likely to have died of cardiovascular disease.

Finally, and most strikingly, only drinking coffee in the morning was associated with a lower risk of death or cardiovascular disease. Those who reported drinking coffee later in the day saw results no different from those who didn’t drink coffee at all.

The researchers were mindful, of course, of our old friend “correlation versus causation,” meaning that it could be (for example) that morning coffee drinkers were also more likely to engage in some other habit that related to lower risks of cardiovascular disease.

Still, this is one of the few coffee studies I’ve reported on in which the risks seem so low and the potential benefits so high that the researchers were comfortable taking the additional step of suggesting people consider adopting a morning coffee habit—instead of simply calling for more research.

As lead author Lu Qi put it:

Our findings indicate it’s not just whether you drink coffee or how much you drink, but the time of day when you drink coffee that’s important. We don’t typically give advice about timing in our dietary guidance, but perhaps we should be thinking about this in the future.

Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen studies suggesting that this most American of work habits is actually good for you. Some of my favorites include:

• A 2015 study from the Harvard School of Public Health that followed 200,000 doctors and nurses over 30 years and found that those who drank coffee were less likely to die from heart disease, stroke, diabetes, neurological diseases, or even suicide.

• A 2017 study from Spain that suggested that more coffee is better, all things considered; a study of almost 20,000 people over 10 years found that drinking as much as four cups of coffee each day could be part of a healthy diet, according to the study’s authors.

• A 2018 study out of the U.K. that involved a lot more people — 500,000 adults — and found that the coffee drinkers among them were 10 percent to 15 percent less likely to die from any cause during the study period than nondrinkers, possibly.

The researchers in that last example didn’t look at time of day, but they did conclude that the health benefits came from the idea that “coffee contains more than 1,000 chemical compounds including antioxidants, which help protect cells from damage.”

Add it all up, and it’s my favorite kind of research: the sort that suggests that something I already enjoy doing and have made a habit of might hold benefits I wasn't even aware of.

Thanks to science, my dad's example -- and maybe even Dolly Parton.

7 other things worth knowing today

• Pope Francis has "bilateral pneumonia" and continues to receive medical care at a hospital in Rome, the Vatican announced on Tuesday. The 88-year-old Pope is reported to be in "fair" condition, and is said to be eating breakfast, reading the newspapers and even doing some work from the hospital. There is a report from Politico that says he has "privately expressed certainty he won't make it this time," which says it has two sources. (NPR; Politico)

• The United States Department of Agriculture on Tuesday said that, over the weekend, it accidentally fired "several" agency employees who are working on the federal government's response to the H5N1 avian flu outbreak. In a statement, the agency said it is trying to quickly reverse the firings. (NBC News)

• DOGE Claimed It Saved $8 Billion in One Contract. It Was Actually $8 Million. The biggest single line item on the website of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team appears to include an error. [DOGE claims to have saved $8 billion from canceling a single line item at the Department of Homeland Security. But if you click through to the source, you find that the contract was actually for $8 million; it looks as if they simply confused millions and billions.] (NY Times; DOGE)

• Johnson & Johnson is facing a critical test over its $10 billion proposal to end litigation over allegations that its baby powder and other talc products were contaminated with asbestos and caused cancer. J&J is attempting to use a subsidiary’s bankruptcy to resolve lawsuits from more than 62,000 plaintiffs. (Yahoo Finance)

• Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropy ended its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs Tuesday, along with its social advocacy efforts including immigration reform and racial equity grantmaking. The move comes after Zuckerberg's Meta ended its DEI programs last month-- a move the company said is meant to ensure that it is "building teams with the most talented people." (Fox News)

• Why can’t we remember our lives as babies or toddlers Memories emerge earlier in some cultures than others, but researchers have long puzzled over our inability to recall events before two or three years of age. (The Guardian)

• Hurricane, a Secret Service dog considered "the most decorated K-9 in U.S. history," has died at the age of 16. The Belgian Malinois famously took down a White House intruder in 2014 while former President Barack Obama and his family were home. He was given the Department of Homeland Security Secretary’s Award for Valor, an honor shared with his handler Marshal Mirarchi. (AOL News)

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Thanks for reading. Photo credit: Me; that’s a different Dunkin’ however. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments!