Coffee as liquid concept, and myself a low-bred java connoisseur, didn’t start until middle age — although consumed on a daily basis all my adult life, a great deal of the time even drinking ‘instant,’ I seemingly never consciously paid attention to actual ‘coffee‘ until the early 1990s.

Despite what I ‘thought‘ my body told me, I simply ‘felt’ the ‘truthiness’ of this for many years (via Time): ‘A new study published in the journal Circulation found that regular coffee drinkers — people who drank less than five cups of coffee in a given day — have a lower risk of dying early from a number of different causes.’

(Illustration: ‘Surrealist Cup,’ by Japanese Latte Artist Kazuki Yamamoto, found here).

In the context of what ails you, coffee the last couple of decades has been high on the list of medicines, able to sometimes wrest hope from despair, mostly though to shotgun-start the morning. And my coffee is black, no additives like cream or sugar — dark Turkish/African beans make a fine, bitter treat.

Further on that coffee-health study from Time:

That doesn’t necessarily mean that coffee is the answer to longevity.
But the researchers found that those who drank coffee on a regular basis had a lower risk of dying during the study’s 30 year follow up from problems such as heart diseases, diabetes, brain conditions and suicide.
The findings only show a link, and cannot confirm that coffee is directly responsible for the reduced risk of death from these causes, but the scientists report that the many compounds in coffee are known to help lower insulin resistance or inflammation, which could result in better health.
…
The results are only the latest in a rehabilitation of coffee.
For many years coffee was deemed unhealthy.
As TIME previously reported, much of that concern came from research in the 1970s and 1980s that linked coffee to higher rates of cancer and heart disease, but didn’t account for the fact that coffee drinkers are also more likely to smoke, possibly drink and engage in other behaviors that contribute to cancer and heart problems.
More recent studies that account for these factors are starting to find the opposite, showing that coffee drinkers might have a slightly lower mortality risk.
As with any food or behavior, however, it’s all about moderation.
As long as you’re not overdoing it, says the study authors, “results from this and previous studies indicate that coffee consumption can be incorporated into a healthy lifestyle.”

Or an unhealthy, old-guy lifestyle. In the last few months, I’ve cup of coffee in the afternoon, something I’ve ‘never‘ done. Usually a cup, maybe cup-and-a-half, right-away in the morning, but no more.
Now since adding that extra cup, I sleep better and feel better — or maybe it’s just java joshing…