I asked for a French press three years ago for Christmas. My parents bought me one that I love and use every day. It’s by Frieling and I highly recommend it. It’s very sturdy and has stayed completely functional over the years. It has a thermal system that keeps the coffee hot all morning. The design is comfortable to use, modern and chic looking, and I’m not the only one who shares this opinion. I was out at one of L.A.’s hippest restaurant, the Phillip Stark designed Katsuya, and they serve coffee in the same pots. I felt so cool when I saw that. And to think that my parents were the ones that picked it out in the first place… they upped their hip-factor by leaps and bounds with that single move!

A new study from the Journal of Neuroinflammation looked at the ability of caffeine to block serum cholesterol from entering the brain. The blood brain barrier is a membrane which prevents all but the smallest molecules from entering into the blood supply of the brain. This barrier helps protect the brain from infections and various toxins circulating in the blood stream.

One theory of the cause of Alzheimer’s disease is that it is associated with a breakdown in the blood brain barrier. This breakdown allows larger substances such as amyloid beta and other potentially harmful particles to enter and accumulate in the brain. The experiment looked at how the caffeine equivalent of about 1 cup of coffee a day is able to prevent damage to the blood brain barrier caused by a high cholesterol diet. The study was done with rabbits, not humans, but the blood brain barrier is something that evolved in all mammals so you would expect things to work the same for us.

In my opinion, coffee is the best delivery vehicle for caffeine because it also has some good antioxidants such as chlorogenic acid which have been shown to slow the release of glucose into the bloodstream after a meal. However, if you can’t stand the taste of coffee or don’t want to pay Starbucks prices, you can always just swallow a pill. Caffeine is pretty much a commodity so you might as well shop for the cheapest caffeine tablets you can find.