A smile for every cup of coffee
Every morning many people would drink coffee to wake them up and get ready to start their day. Not only that, coffee shops have become popular these days and drinking coffee has become the trend. Check out Coffee Geek to learn the best coffee tips and reviews for good.
But why do some people love drinking it and some don't? Is it because it tastes good and addictive? Or does our genes and environment have something to say about it?
Coffee is the most popular beverage in America just above bottled water, sodas, tea, and beer. Recently, research suggests that the intake of coffee could be affected by a positive feedback loop between genetics and the environment.
Thought to play a role in human physiological and behavioral traits, this phenomenon is called the "quantile-specific heritability" and is also associated with cholesterol levels and body weight.
Using quantile regression, in which the data is separated into subgroups and then individually analyzed, Paul Williams-Berkeley Lab staff scientist, found a correlation between the amount of coffee a person drinks and the environments that they live in.
Simply put, Berkeley Lab has found a positive feedback loop between genetics and the environment.
These environmental factors sort of set the groundwork in which a person's genes start to affect. So if your surroundings predispose you to drink more coffee, then the genes that you possess will also predispose you to like coffee have a big impact.
Williams' research drew from data collected from the Framingham Heart Study-a famous, ongoing study that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) started in 1948 to investigate how lifestyle and genes affect rates of cardiovascular diseases.
He used quantile regression, a statistical approach to calculate the proportion of participants' coffee drinking that could be explained by genetics and what must be influenced by environmental factors. Some of the external factors noted from the past research that indicates the significance are geographic location, age, sex, and whether or not one smokes tobacco; with older male smokers of European ancestry drinking the most.
Although the exact causative genes remain unknown, the analysis indicates that 36%-58% of coffee intake is genetically determined. It also confirms Williams' hypothesis that coffee drinking is a quantile-specific trait, which is the correlation between a parent's coffee-drinking going increasingly stronger for each offspring's coffee consumption bracket or quantile.
It is commonly believed in genetic research that one's surroundings and lifestyle can alter gene expression levels is consistent and measurable ways that lead to creating a phenotype or the outward manifestation trait. But Williams' statistics show that it is more complicated than that. He believes that people drink coffee for a variety of reasons like to socialize and for health benefits.
Drinking coffee can improve energy levels and make a person smarter, it can help burn fat, can drastically improve physical performance, contains essential nutrients, may lower risk of Type 2 diabetes, and many more. There's no wonder people get hooked by them.
Paul Williams plans to assess next whether quantile-specific heritability also plays a role in alcohol consumption and pulmonary function. He said that this could be a new era of exploration and it will fundamentally change how we think genes influence a human's traits.