$9 a bag . . . not drugs, but cement!

I was making my daily trip to our local hardware store, El Constructor, today . . . part of the fun of finishing a house is always needing something . . . and its $15 to $40 every time! Anyway there is an enthusiastic kid in there who speaks English and rushes to help “Mr Richard” and always gets my name right . . . and now I’m used to invoices in triplicate, all duly rubber stamped for every purchase no matter how small. Anyway, just for my own curiosity, I asked the price of cement . . . $9 a bag!! When we started building our house it was $5 a bag!! And since cement is the primary ingredient of houses in Panama . . . WOW! My present home overlooking the Valley, the river and the 9th Hole of Valle Escondido Resort now looks like an even better deal! Check it out!

And that’s just cement! The price of steel has soared as well, along with anything that has to be imported, which is just about everything. I predict the building boom is going to slow and you’ll see expats grabbing the existing housing that is for sale. It may not be exactly what you want, but with the increased cost of building . . . to say nothing of the hassle . . . it might be wise to settle for something that someone else designed and built!

“Coffee Cuts The Risk of Death”

I wrote a few days ago about my new venture as a “health food grower”, since it puts a better spin on things than being a “drug grower”, since I grow America’s drug of choice, caffeine.  Garth Liseth, from up in Canada . . . eh . . . where they consume a lot of coffee . . . eh . . . making coffee I guess Canada’s drug of choice as well . . . sent me another great article from Sunday’s Vancouver Sun about the health benefits of coffee.  Thanks Garth! 

A new study on the health effects of coffee sent excited headline writers into overdrive. “Coffee cuts risk of death,” said one. Alas, coffee will not make us immortal. The risk of death remains 100 per cent no matter how much coffee we consume.

What the study published in the latest Annals of Internal Medicine concluded was that regular coffee consumption was not associated with an increased mortality rate. That’s not eternal life, but it’s still good news.

The study, led by University of Madrid epidemiologist Esther Lopez-Garcia, monitored the coffee-drinking habits of 41,736 men starting in 1986 and 86,214 women from 1980 through 2004. It recorded 6,888 deaths (2,049 from cardiovascular disease and 2,491 from cancer) among the men, and 11,095 deaths (2,368 from cardiovascular disease and 5,011 from cancer) among the women.

The researchers found no detrimental effect of coffee consumption on mortality. In fact, there was an inverse relationship between mortality from all causes, mainly as a result of a lower number of cardiovascular disease deaths. The study did not go so far as to declare that coffee provided a benefit, but said such a possibility needs further investigation.

Women who drank four to five cups of coffee a day had a 26-per-cent lower mortality rate from all causes than those who didn’t drink coffee at all. Those who drank two to three cups a day had a 25-per-cent lower risk of dying from heart disease than non-drinkers. There appeared to be no connection between coffee and cancer deaths and the results for men had no statistical significance.

Interestingly, the study determined that the effects on longevity were due to compounds in the coffee other than caffeine. But it might be argued that coffee has no purpose without caffeine.

This isn’t the first study to make positive associations between coffee and health. Other research has linked coffee consumption to decreased rates of Parkinson’s disease and reduced risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

So go ahead, order up an Americano, double shot. But easy on the muffins; they’re killers.