Today we discuss how decaf coffee can curb symptoms of caffeine withdrawal, how a recent study revealed that those who are rich in money aren’t necessarily rich in intelligence, and a study that looked into cheap and effective preventative cavity treatment.
Today we discuss how decaf coffee can curb symptoms of caffeine withdrawal, how a recent study revealed that those who are rich in money aren’t necessarily rich in intelligence, and a study that looked into cheap and effective preventative cavity treatment.
To Re-Caf Choose Decaf
How Smart Are Rich People?
Cavities
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to get smarter with Calli and Nate — for free! Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/to-re-caf-choose-decaf-how-smart-are-rich-people-cavities
[SFX: INTRO MUSIC/WHOOSH
NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back!
NATE: Today you’ll learn about how decaf coffee can curb symptoms of caffeine withdrawal, how a recent study revealed that those who are rich in money aren’t necessarily rich in intelligence, and a study that looked into a cheap and effective preventative cavity treatment!
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: I am not a coffee drinker, so there are several things about the coffee drinking experience that don't really make sense to me. Probably number one on that list is the existence of decaf coffee. Because isn't the whole point of coffee to get the caffeine? And so if you don't have the caffeine, what are you just going for the flavor? I don't know. To me, that doesn't make sense. But it turns out that decaf coffee can actually help curb caffeine withdrawal symptoms.
CALLI: Interesting. Okay. So I'm not a huge coffee drinker myself. I do enjoy it from time to time. I'm normally more of like five hour energy, rockstar, that sort of drink. But I've also never really understood decaf. How in the world could decaffeinated coffee help curb caffeine withdrawal?
NATE: So anybody who does drink coffee regularly knows exactly what we're talking about. One of the key components in coffee is caffeine. And caffeine Withdrawal means headaches. It means grogginess, and it can mean irritability. Yeah. So how do you solve this problem? You drink a cup of coffee to curb the withdrawal and repeat as necessary. Just like any addiction, it's not the healthiest solution. Even though we've talked before about the surprisingly restorative powers of coffee, that only works if you don't overdo it. Since a lot of coffee can lead to some nasty health issues later on, like increased blood pressure.
CALLI: And you're saying that decaf can curb some of the symptoms?
NATE: Well, that's the question that Llewellyn Mills and the fine people at the University of Sydney wanted to answer. So they recruited 61 coffee drinkers with a heavy consumption rate defined here as three or more cups per day. And they had them abstain from caffeine for 24 hours before bringing them in for a questionnaire.
CALLI: Wait, you're telling me that they put 61 grumpy caffeine-deprived Australians all together in one room and thought that was a good idea?
NATE: You know the things you do for science. All right, But here's the mindset the researchers needed them to be in. First, the participants were asked to rate their expectations on how much they would have to drink of a variety of drinks to curb their caffeine withdrawal symptoms. And those drinks were water, decaf coffee and normal coffee. Then they rated the extent to which they were currently experiencing various symptoms of caffeine withdrawal. So how fatigued are you? How nauseated are you, how bad is your headache, etc.? And then the researchers split the team up into three groups, then made each of the participants of the first two groups a fresh cup of coffee right in front of them.
CALLI: Oh, that's mean. And potentially really dangerous. That's like putting a mouse or a bird in front of a cat and telling it not to attack.
NATE: Well, maybe. But here's the catch. They made them decaf coffee. One group was told this up front, but the second group was told that it was a legitimate caffeinated coffee. The third group was given a glass of water. And then after 45 minutes, the participants did the survey again.
CALLI: Oh, if I was a part of the study, I would have started a fist fight. If I had been the one in the water group like that would not have ended up going well. What did the study end up finding?
NATE: You might be right about being mad about being in the water group. Their withdrawal symptoms were similar before and after taking a drink, so very little effect. But here is where it gets interesting. The people who believed they were drinking caffeinated coffee reported significantly less severe withdrawal symptoms after drinking the coffee.
CALLI: Okay. So right there we see the classic placebo effect.
NATE: We are. But I'm not done because the most interesting part is that the people who knew they drank decaf coffee also saw a significant drop off of 9.5 points in withdrawal symptoms. That's not as large as the other group who saw a drop off of 18.1 points, but still pretty freaking large. Yeah, which means that decaf coffee decreased withdrawal symptoms without having an active ingredient, even when people knew they were taking a placebo.
CALLI: Okay. So you you know, the term self-fulfilling prophecy, right? That's basically the fundamental of the placebo effect, which we've talked about recently when we discussed the difference between open label and deceptive placebos. So do you think there's a chance that people just assumed decaf coffee would curb those symptoms?
NATE: Well, that's what the researchers expected at first until they did further analysis. So one of the questions on the study was how much do you expect decaf coffee to curb your caffeine withdrawal? And among those who knew they're drinking decaf, people's expectations about the effects of decaf didn't actually predict how much their withdrawal symptoms decreased. So really, the effect might be a result of mental conditioning from years of experience with coffee.
CALLI: Huh. Okay. So things that are familiar to them about it, like the smell and the taste and probably even just like the touch of holding a mug, stuff like that.
NATE: Exactly. So the researchers believe that every part of the coffee experience I'm talking from the sound of the coffee maker to the smell of the beans, even the warmth of the cup are linked to the physiological effects of ingesting caffeine. And that includes a reduction in withdrawal symptoms. So basically, your body will still experience some caffeine withdrawal over time. But there's a good chance that a lot of this withdrawal is an experience withdrawal rather than a chemical one.
CALLI: So what is the bigger picture here? What can we learn from this deceptive decaf experiment?
NATE: Well, the bigger picture is that the deception is unethical. So you mentioned the placebo story we did a while ago. And this study is operating under the same ethos. The researchers conclude that it's not ethical for medical professionals to deceive patients recovering from any addiction with a placebo. But they say this study is further evidence for the effectiveness of open label placebos. And this experiment may even be able to be applied to other addictions to reduce withdrawal symptoms. More studies need to be done to see if this kind of work can be applied to, say, a severe drug addiction. But for now, these findings suggest that just because you're addicted to something doesn't necessarily mean you have to suffer during recovery, even if that addiction is caffeine.
CALLI: Huh. All right. I'm going to have to see if there's such thing as non caffeinated five hour energies.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Sometimes you hear about rich people doing some interesting things, like maybe, I don't know, buying Twitter. But there's actually a question now of if rich people are even smart. And a new revelation that some of them probably aren't.
NATE: All right. So why would people believe that there is a link between money and intelligence?
CALLI: On average, it is a fact that people with higher incomes do tend to score higher on IQ tests than people with lower or medium ranged incomes. Statistically speaking, it's a difference of an entire point. There's also a social aspect relating to how American society views money and linked success to intelligent decisions being made. But a new study from Linköping University suggests that the link is deceiving at best and dishonest at worst.
NATE: Okay. How?
CALLI: Well, the researchers took wage data from the Swedish population registers and combined it with the scores from cognitive ability tests taken from 18 to 19 year old subjects. This made up an entire spectrum of reliable income data from the lowest earners to the absolute highest. They found that the hypothesis that cognitive ability being tied to wage was actually quite accurate until it wasn't.
NATE: What is that supposed to mean?
CALLI: Okay. Well, they isolated all of the higher incomes defined as being above 64,000 U.S. dollars annually and noticed something interesting. When you break high incomes down into different tiers, you start to notice a trend that the entire relationship between intellect and money plateaus, meaning that there is no increase in intelligence as people make more money. In fact, the top 1% of the highest income surveyed actually scored lower on IQ tests than most people surveyed.
NATE: Okay. Does that mean that the most intelligent people were like middle income people, not higher?
CALLI: Yeah, and this isn't a small finding either. The highest earners here made nearly twice as much money as those with the highest intellects in the modern era. There's been a huge discussion in academia and even some mainstream media about the rise of income inequality. A common defense for these wage discrepancies has been that top earner’s unique talents and their admissions of having high IQ qualify them for a massive increase in pay. What the study proposes is that there's no evidence that intellect has anything to do with income discrepancies like these.
NATE: Okay. I do think you're leaving out what might be the most important part here, though. The IQ test doesn't really matter at all.
CALLI: Exactly. IQ tests are one of the most widely cited tests in psychology, with thousands of studies and over a century of use. But there are countless methodological flaws in relying on IQ tests, to the point that some researchers believe IQ testing has done more harm than good. One of the hallmarks of IQ testing is that job performance is in any way related to intelligence. But most of the research linking those two concepts is decades old, and already correlations between the two being linked actually erode over time when doing comparisons years apart.
NATE: All right. So with all of that in mind, why should it matter that people with high incomes don't also have high IQ?
CALLI: Because it's empirical evidence of two things. One, the measure by which people defend income inequality is based on a flawed premise. And two, income inequality does not happen due to somebody possessing a higher intellect. Because even if it did, the very concept that high IQ scores matter at all would disprove that notion altogether. There are a number of reasons that people earn high incomes. Some of it is good old fashioned hard work. Some of it is socially related. Some of it could even be luck. One thing it is not, though, is a high IQ score.
NATE: I should buy a social media website.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: We all try to take care of our teeth, but eventually most of us are going to need to deal with a cavity on at least one trip to the dentist and to deal with the cavity you need to get a filling. Or at least that was the case until recently, when it was discovered that you can now prevent cavities with a protective liquid instead.
CALLI: Okay, that sounds really cool. I know for a lot of people, you know, going to the dentist can be scary. It never was for me. Both my dad and my grandpa were my dentist growing up, so. Yeah. Yeah, not. Not a big deal. But it can be really scary for people, especially when it comes to lower income families.
NATE: Absolutely. And it can be a lot of trouble for, you know, for kids if both of your parents work, you know, when you get to the dentist. And that is also the case for a lot of low income families. So when someone says you need to see a dentist, that can trigger a lot of anxiety in people, both emotionally and financially. But dental cavities are the most common chronic disease in children, especially for kids from low income families who are two times as likely to have cavities compared to their higher income peers. And if you don't treat cavities quickly and properly, they can lead to infections and reduce the quality of life for these kids.
CALLI: Okay. When we talk about quality of life, what do you mean here?
NATE: So more than one study says that cavities are directly linked to poor performance and poor attendance in schools, which is why it's good that now some basic dental services are offered in schools, including the one that discovered that silver diamine fluoride or SDF for short can help prevent cavities.
CALLI: Cool. Okay, so I've heard of fluoride before being used for cavities. But what is SDF?
NATE: SDF as a liquid that gets gently brushed onto the teeth surface. And a study was performed recently on whether SDF could be as effective in treating cavities as dental sealants, which are the treatment of choice for most dentists. And two years later, it was found that it prevented most cavities from forming at all.
CALLI: Well, cool. Okay. And this was discovered in a school program?
NATE: Yeah. Back in 2017, researchers at the NYU College of Dentistry received funding to run the nation's largest school based cavity prevention study, which is called Carried Away. Carried Away is a randomized trial that compares how effective two different cavity protection techniques are. One is a simple treatment using SDF, and the other is a more complex treatment using traditional glass based sealants. And both are noninvasive and applied to the surface of the teeth to prevent cavities in children. But for the same time and cost, providers can treat more children with the simpler SDF therapy.
CALLI: Interesting. Okay, so it's cheaper and just as effective. So how did the study go?
NATE: Back in 2019 and early 2020. The study was done on nearly 3000 students, ranging from kindergarten to third grade across 47 NYC area schools, most of which were in lower income areas. When they visited each school, the research team, which consisted of a supervising dentist, a team of dental hygienist, some registered nurses and a few assistants did baseline exams to measure any tooth decay. Then they applied some fluoride varnish and then either sealants or SDF, depending on whether the school was assigned to receive the complex or the simple treatment.
CALLI: Awesome. And the results?
NATE: Were delayed. If you remember, in early 2020, the COVID 19 pandemic temporarily closed every NYC school and stopped all school-based care, but this ended up working in the researchers favor because when their work resumed in 2022, they were able to schedule follow up visits. And here they discovered that both the simple and the complex treatments were successful. After two years, 82% of the students treated with the more complex sealant saw no cavities form, and 81% of them treated with SDF saw the same results, meaning that SDF was just as effective as the sealant.
CALLI: That is super impressive. And that could help a lot of people.
NATE: Absolutely. And what's even more impressive is that SDF was even more effective on cavities that already existed. 46% of the students who were treated with sealants had cavities that did not get worse. And 56% of the students treated with SDF saw those same results. Which means that SDF was even better on preexisting cavities than the sealants were.
CALLI: Okay, but that sounds like it was an accident. But a happy accident.
NATE: Exactly. Yeah. This provided evidence that dental care can occur even in the face of dental professional shortages. Sealants need a dentist or a dental hygienist to be applied, but SDF can be applied by nurses who are not experiencing a shortage right now. And even if you can't afford or find the time to go to the dentist. SDF is also available in most drugstores for about $50, and all you need is one coat on your teeth every few years or so.
CALLI: Cool. I want to tell my dad.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. If you’re like me and didn’t quite understand decaf coffee before, it might be best to think of it like a placebo drug - more of a psychological quick fix than an actual cure. But interestingly, a new study out of Australia has found that decaf coffee can curb the effects of caffeine withdrawal EVEN IF YOU KNOW IT’S DECAF. This sort of open-label placebo study has huge implications for addiction treatment all over the world, and if applied to other drugs, could potentially change how we treat and even consider the topic of addiction!
CALLI: Income inequality is one of the biggest topics in modern America, and it’s often excused due to the “high IQs” of our highest earners. But is there any accuracy to that statement? Turns out - nope! A recent study revealed that intelligence begins to stagnate for earners above $64,000 annually, and worse - the IQ test itself is flawed and outdated! There are many reasons for income inequality, but intelligence disparity is not one of them!
NATE: Everybody hates a trip to the dentist, but if you’ve got a cavity, you could be putting your own life at risk by ignoring that trip - but soon, you might be able to treat those cavities yourself for a much cheaper cost. Silver diamine fluoride is an over-the-counter substance that requires one coat applied topically every few years or so, and is found to be just as protective against cavities as normal sealants! More studies need to be performed on how SDF can be applied without a professional nearby, but soon, we might be able to treat our teeth without having to worry about all the pain involved with a normal dentist!