Excessive coffee consumption is not good. It can lead to increased blood pressure, insomnia, anxiety, headaches, digestive issues and muscle twitching, among other things.

Talk about clouds in my coffee.

On the other hand, moderate coffee consumption has been linked to longer life, lower risk of type 2 diabetes, heart failure, stroke, colon cancer, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, improved liver function and even stronger DNA.

So if you're a coffee lover, where's the best place to live?

Fueled by caffeine and curiosity, the personal finance company WalletHub surveyed the nation's 100 largest cities with that question in mind, looking at 12 key indicators of a strong coffee culture, such as numbers of coffee shops per capita to average price per pack of coffee.

The top 10 best cities were, in order: Portland, Oregon; Orlando, Florida; Long Beach, California; Miami, Florida; Seattle, Washington; Tampa, Florida; San Francisco, California; Austin, Texas; Oakland, California, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Buffalo, New York, had the lowest average price for a pack of coffee, which was 1.6 times lower than in Honolulu, Hawaii, the city with the highest.

Fremont, California, had the highest average annual spending on coffee per household, which was 3.7 times higher than in Detroit, Michigan, the city with the lowest.

Gilbert, Arizona, had the highest share of households owning single-cup/pod-brewing coffee makers, which was 1.6 times higher than in Newark, New Jersey, the city with the lowest.

And finally, Portland had the most coffee and tea manufacturers (per square root of population), which was 21.2 times more than Fresno, California, the city with the fewest.

Body of Knowledge

Generally speaking, it is not possible to lick one's elbow. (Go ahead, take a moment and try.) The human arm is structured in such a way that it cannot be bent close enough for the tongue to reach. And the tongue is too short.

However, it is not impossible. People with exceptional flexibility and/or exceptionally long tongues can sometimes achieve this feat. Why is another matter.

Get Me That, Stat!

Data from a National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between August 2021 and August 2023 found that 36.4% of U.S. adults had no cardiovascular disease risk factors, but 34.9% had one, and 28.7% had two or more.

A higher percentage of men (31.7%) than women (25.8%) had two or more CVD risk factors.

Mark Your Calendar

October is awareness month for eye injury prevention, healthy lungs, ADHD, breast cancer, dental hygiene, Down syndrome, spina bifida, sudden cardiac arrest and sudden infant death syndrome.

Doc Talk

Cauterize: Make eye contact with her

Phobia of the Week

Catoptrophobia: Fear of mirrors (but not a reflection on you)

Best Medicine

Q: What do you get when a physician goes back in time to teach himself?

A: Pair o' docs.

Observation

"My therapist told me that I over-analyze everything. I explained to him that he only thinks this because of his unhappy relationship with his mother." — Michel Templet

Medical History

This week in 1958, Swedish doctors implanted the first internal heart pacemaker. Earlier that year, Rune Elmqvist had invented this particular pacemaker, designed to be implanted in a subcutaneous pouch in a patient suffering from a cardiac disease. It used only two transistors and was the size of a hockey puck. The apparatus sent pulses to the cardiac muscle to establish normal and regular contractions. Although this prototype worked for only three hours, the recipient went on to live another 40 years with 26 additional pacemakers, passing away in 2001 at the age of 86.

Ig Nobel Apprised

The Ig Nobel Prizes celebrate achievements that make people laugh, then think. A look at real science that's hard to take seriously and even harder to ignore.

This year, the Ig Nobel Prize in chemistry went to a trio of researchers who wondered whether cooking with nonstick pots and pans provided a sufficient dose of polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon) to increase food volume and satiety without increasing calorie content.

(Note: In rat studies, Teflon has been found to be safe to consume because the material is inert and passes through the digestive system unabsorbed — another case of not sticking.)

The scientists found that while inadvertently added Teflon flakes from ordinary cooking were vanishingly small and posed no issues, purposefully adding a dash of Teflon to foods did in fact boost food volume and satiety without added calories.

Self-Exam

Q: The vocal cords are located in the:

A) Pharynx

B) Larynx

C) Trachea

D) Bronchi

A: B) Larynx, the hollow muscular organ forming an air passage to the lungs

Curtain Calls

Rebecca Longhoffer was a 39-year-old tourist visiting Las Vegas. In 2003, while crossing the main boulevard, she stepped onto a cast-iron plate covering electrical wiring that was obscured by a deep rain puddle. She was fatally electrocuted.

To find out more about Scott LaFee and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: rachel pollock at Unsplash