Zat Kafein sudah bukan hal asing lagi dalam kehidupan kita. Zat tersebut telah ada di mana-mana, seperti minuman teh, kopi, obat, bahkan pada produk makanan dan minuman dalam kemasan. Meski kafein memiliki efek positif seperti memberikan suntikan energi dan membuat Anda lebih waspada, namun kafein juga bisa memberikan efek buruk pada tubuh.

Saco-Indonesia.com - Zat Kafein sudah bukan hal asing lagi dalam kehidupan kita. Zat tersebut telah ada di mana-mana, seperti minuman teh, kopi, obat, bahkan pada produk makanan dan minuman dalam kemasan. Meski kafein memiliki efek positif seperti memberikan suntikan energi dan membuat Anda lebih waspada, namun kafein juga bisa memberikan efek buruk pada tubuh.

Ketika dikonsumsi dengan takaran yang tak tepat, apalagi berlebihan, kafein bisa menyebabkan efek kerusakan pada kesehatan dan tubuh. Berikut adalah empat efek negatif yang bisa dilakukan kafein pada tubuh Anda, seperti dilansir oleh Mag for Women.

1. Alergi
Sistem kekebalan tubuh manusia didesain untuk bisa menerima kafein dalam jumlah terbatas setiap hari. Namun beberapa orang memiliki alergi dan sangat sensitif terhadap kafein. Bagi mereka, kafein adalah hal terlarang. Biasanya alergi kafein terjadi pada orang yang memiliki tekanan darah tinggi, sistem pencernaan yang tak sehat, mengalami luka lambung, atau pasien penyakit jantung. Jika Anda mengalami sakit kepala setelah mengonsumsi kafein, bisa jadi itu pertanda alergi dan Anda harus segera menghindarinya.

2. Risiko berkaitan kehamilan
Wanita yang sedang hamil harus lebih berhati-hati sebelum mengonsumsi makanan atau minuman yang mengandung kafein. Kafein tak hanya buruk untuk tubuh ibu, melainkan juga untuk janin mereka. Kafein diketahui bisa meningkatkan risiko komplikasi yang terkait dengan kehamilan. Kafein bisa sampai pada janin dengan cepat setelah melewati plasenta. Mengonsumsi kafein dengan takaran tak benar saat hamil bisa meningkatkan risiko kelahiran prematur atau masalah metabolisme pada bayi yang belum lahir. Kafein juga bisa masuk dalam sistem tubuh janin, meningkatkan kadar racun, dan menyebabkan keguguran.

3. Efek samping
Mengonsumsi kafein berlebihan seperti minum sekitar empat sampai lima cangkir kopi akan memberikan efek samping yang buruk seperti peningkatan detak jantung, merasa grogi dan gelisah, otot bergetar, dan insomnia. Jika ini diteruskan akan menyebabkan rasa lemah dan lelah. Kafein juga bisa menyebabkan masalah pencernaan, kecemasan, dan gelisah. Tak hanya berimbas pada fisik, kafein juga menyebabkan efek samping dalam hal psikologis.

4. Kecanduan
Efek negatif yang buruk dari kafein adalah membuat Anda kecanduan. Kafein sama dengan obat yang akan membuat Anda kecanduan dan tergantung padanya. Itulah kenapa terkadang orang yang sudah kecanduan kopi tak akan bisa meninggalkan kopi dalam sehari. Anda akan merasa efek negatif pada tubuh seperti sakit kepala, gelisah, dan lainnya ketika tak mengonsumsi kopi, setelah kecanduan.

Itulah beberapa efek buruk kafein yang bisa terjadi pada tubuh. Anda boleh mengonsumsi kafein karena memang ada manfaatnya. Namun sebaiknya perhatikan takaran kafein yang dikonsumsi agar tak berbalik memberikan efek negatif pada tubuh.

Sumber :merdeka.com

Editor : Maulana Lee

Sudah umum diketahui bahwa mengolah sayur dan buah bisa mempengaruhi kadar nutrisi yang ada di dalamnya. Seperti memasak sayuran yang ditengarai bisa mengurangi nutrisi, begitu juga dengan membekukan buah dan sayur. Faktanya, beberapa buah dan sayuran memang bisa kehilangan rasa dan nutrisi di dalamnya ketika dibekukan. Namun ada juga buah dan sayur yang tetap bernutrisi meski sudah dibekukan.

Sudah umum diketahui bahwa mengolah sayur dan buah bisa mempengaruhi kadar nutrisi yang ada di dalamnya. Seperti memasak sayuran yang ditengarai bisa mengurangi nutrisi, begitu juga dengan membekukan buah dan sayur. Faktanya, beberapa buah dan sayuran memang bisa kehilangan rasa dan nutrisi di dalamnya ketika dibekukan. Namun ada juga buah dan sayur yang tetap bernutrisi meski sudah dibekukan.

Berikut adalah beberapa jenis buah dan sayuran terbaik yang tetap bernutrisi meski dibekukan atau disajikan dalam keadaan dingin.

1. Jagung
Jika Anda membandingkan jagung kemasan dalam kaleng dengan jagung yang dibekukan dalam plastik, Anda pasti merasakan bahwa jagung yang dibekukan masih telah memiliki rasa yang lebih enak jika dibandingkan dengan yang dikemas dalam kaleng. Michael Ferraro dari Delicatessen di New York City telah menjelaskan bahwa membekukan jagung akan meningkatkan jumlah lutein dan zeaxanthin yang ada di dalamnya hingga 118 persen. Zeaxanthin adalah karotenoid yang membantu untuk mencegah penurunan kemampuan penglihatan. Meski begitu, untuk kualitas terbaik sebaiknya konsumsi jagung beku maksimal enam bulan, jangan lebih dari itu.

2. Kacang polong
Kacang polong yang beku telah memiliki rasa dan tekstur yang hampir sama dengan kacang polong yang masih segar. Penelitian yang diterbitkan dalam Journal of Food Science mengungkap bahwa membekukan kacang polong justru bisa meningkatkan jumlah antioksidan yang ada di dalamnya. Selain itu, kacang polong juga telah mengandung 13 persen kebutuhan vitamin C yang Anda butuhkan. Penelitian di UC Davis juga menemukan bahwa kacang polong hanya kehilangan sepersepuluh vitamin C di dalamnya jika disimpan dalam freezer selama satu tahun.

3. Bayam
Sebuah penelitian di Polandia telah menemukan bahwa bayam yang didinginkan justru mengandung lebih banyak kalsium dibandingkan dengan bayam segar. Cara mengolahnya adalah dengan mengukusnya sebentar untuk dapat menghancurkan dinding sel dan membuat antioksidan di dalamnya lebih mudah diakses. Namun sebaiknya jangan menyimpan bayam terlalu lama. Penelitian tersebut juga menunjukkan bahwa folat dalam bayam yang ampuh untuk melawan penyakit jantung akan menurun hingga 43 persen jika disimpan dalam waktu tiga sampai enam bulan.

4. Blueberry
Membekukan blueberry diketahui tak akan bisa menurunkan jumlah antioksidan yang ada di dalamnya. Antioksidan itu adalah anthocyanins, yaitu jenis flavonoids yang mencegah penyakit jantung dan kanker, seperti dalam penelitian di Romania. Anda juga bisa membiarkan blueberry beku untuk mencari dengan sendirinya di suhu ruangan. Namun penelitian mengungkap bahwa jika Anda melelehkannya menggunakan microwave selama satu menit, flavonoid di dalamnya akan meningkat. Selain itu, pastikan untuk tidak menyimpannya lebih dari empat bulan.

5. Ceri
Ketika dibekukan, zat anthocyanins yang ada dalam ceri akan menjadi semakin banyak. Anthocyanins adalah salah satu zat yang ampuh melawan kanker. Namun berdasarkan sebuah penelitian di Journal of Food Science, Anda akan kehilangan banyak nutrisi di dalamnya jika terlalu lama menyimpan. Dalam waktu tiga bulan, polyphenol yang ada di dalamnya akan menurun hingga 25 persen dan kembali turun hingga 50 persen jika disimpan selama enam bulan.

Itulah beberapa sayuran dan buah yang masih nikmat untuk dikonsumsi sebagai makanan beku. Membekukan buah dan sayuran di atas justru akan meningkatkan jumlah nutrisi di dalamnya.

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KATHMANDU, Nepal — When the dense pillar of smoke from cremations by the Bagmati River was thinning late last week, the bodies were all coming from Gongabu, a common stopover for Nepali migrant workers headed overseas, and they were all of young men.

Hindu custom dictates that funeral pyres should be lighted by the oldest son of the deceased, but these men were too young to have sons, so they were burned by their brothers or fathers. Sukla Lal, a maize farmer, made a 14-hour journey by bus to retrieve the body of his 19-year-old son, who had been on his way to the Persian Gulf to work as a laborer.

“He wanted to live in the countryside, but he was compelled to leave by poverty,” Mr. Lal said, gazing ahead steadily as his son’s remains smoldered. “He told me, ‘You can live on your land, and I will come up with money, and we will have a happy family.’ ”

Weeks will pass before the authorities can give a complete accounting of who died in the April 25 earthquake, but it is already clear that Nepal cannot afford the losses. The countryside was largely stripped of its healthy young men even before the quake, as they migrated in great waves — 1,500 a day by some estimates — to work as laborers in India, Malaysia or one of the gulf nations, leaving many small communities populated only by elderly parents, women and children. Economists say that at some times of the year, one-quarter of Nepal’s population is working outside the country.

WASHINGTON — The former deputy director of the C.I.A. asserts in a forthcoming book that Republicans, in their eagerness to politicize the killing of the American ambassador to Libya, repeatedly distorted the agency’s analysis of events. But he also argues that the C.I.A. should get out of the business of providing “talking points” for administration officials in national security events that quickly become partisan, as happened after the Benghazi attack in 2012.

The official, Michael J. Morell, dismisses the allegation that the United States military and C.I.A. officers “were ordered to stand down and not come to the rescue of their comrades,” and he says there is “no evidence” to support the charge that “there was a conspiracy between C.I.A. and the White House to spin the Benghazi story in a way that would protect the political interests of the president and Secretary Clinton,” referring to the secretary of state at the time, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But he also concludes that the White House itself embellished some of the talking points provided by the Central Intelligence Agency and had blocked him from sending an internal study of agency conclusions to Congress.

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“I finally did so without asking,” just before leaving government, he writes, and after the White House released internal emails to a committee investigating the State Department’s handling of the issue.

A lengthy congressional investigation remains underway, one that many Republicans hope to use against Mrs. Clinton in the 2016 election cycle.

In parts of the book, “The Great War of Our Time” (Twelve), Mr. Morell praises his C.I.A. colleagues for many successes in stopping terrorist attacks, but he is surprisingly critical of other C.I.A. failings — and those of the National Security Agency.

Soon after Mr. Morell retired in 2013 after 33 years in the agency, President Obama appointed him to a commission reviewing the actions of the National Security Agency after the disclosures of Edward J. Snowden, a former intelligence contractor who released classified documents about the government’s eavesdropping abilities. Mr. Morell writes that he was surprised by what he found.

“You would have thought that of all the government entities on the planet, the one least vulnerable to such grand theft would have been the N.S.A.,” he writes. “But it turned out that the N.S.A. had left itself vulnerable.”

He concludes that most Wall Street firms had better cybersecurity than the N.S.A. had when Mr. Snowden swept information from its systems in 2013. While he said he found himself “chagrined by how well the N.S.A. was doing” compared with the C.I.A. in stepping up its collection of data on intelligence targets, he also sensed that the N.S.A., which specializes in electronic spying, was operating without considering the implications of its methods.

“The N.S.A. had largely been collecting information because it could, not necessarily in all cases because it should,” he says.

The book is to be released next week.

Mr. Morell was a career analyst who rose through the ranks of the agency, and he ended up in the No. 2 post. He served as President George W. Bush’s personal intelligence briefer in the first months of his presidency — in those days, he could often be spotted at the Starbucks in Waco, Tex., catching up on his reading — and was with him in the schoolhouse in Florida on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when the Bush presidency changed in an instant.

Mr. Morell twice took over as acting C.I.A. director, first when Leon E. Panetta was appointed secretary of defense and then when retired Gen. David H. Petraeus resigned over an extramarital affair with his biographer, a relationship that included his handing her classified notes of his time as America’s best-known military commander.

Mr. Morell says he first learned of the affair from Mr. Petraeus only the night before he resigned, and just as the Benghazi events were turning into a political firestorm. While praising Mr. Petraeus, who had told his deputy “I am very lucky” to run the C.I.A., Mr. Morell writes that “the organization did not feel the same way about him.” The former general “created the impression through the tone of his voice and his body language that he did not want people to disagree with him (which was not true in my own interaction with him),” he says.

But it is his account of the Benghazi attacks — and how the C.I.A. was drawn into the debate over whether the Obama White House deliberately distorted its account of the death of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens — that is bound to attract attention, at least partly because of its relevance to the coming presidential election. The initial assessments that the C.I.A. gave to the White House said demonstrations had preceded the attack. By the time analysts reversed their opinion, Susan E. Rice, now the national security adviser, had made a series of statements on Sunday talk shows describing the initial assessment. The controversy and other comments Ms. Rice made derailed Mr. Obama’s plan to appoint her as secretary of state.

The experience prompted Mr. Morell to write that the C.I.A. should stay out of the business of preparing talking points — especially on issues that are being seized upon for “political purposes.” He is critical of the State Department for not beefing up security in Libya for its diplomats, as the C.I.A., he said, did for its employees.

But he concludes that the assault in which the ambassador was killed took place “with little or no advance planning” and “was not well organized.” He says the attackers “did not appear to be looking for Americans to harm. They appeared intent on looting and conducting some vandalism,” setting fires that killed Mr. Stevens and a security official, Sean Smith.

Mr. Morell paints a picture of an agency that was struggling, largely unsuccessfully, to understand dynamics in the Middle East and North Africa when the Arab Spring broke out in late 2011 in Tunisia. The agency’s analysts failed to see the forces of revolution coming — and then failed again, he writes, when they told Mr. Obama that the uprisings would undercut Al Qaeda by showing there was a democratic pathway to change.

“There is no good explanation for our not being able to see the pressures growing to dangerous levels across the region,” he writes. The agency had again relied too heavily “on a handful of strong leaders in the countries of concern to help us understand what was going on in the Arab street,” he says, and those leaders themselves were clueless.

Moreover, an agency that has always overvalued secretly gathered intelligence and undervalued “open source” material “was not doing enough to mine the wealth of information available through social media,” he writes. “We thought and told policy makers that this outburst of popular revolt would damage Al Qaeda by undermining the group’s narrative,” he writes.

Instead, weak governments in Egypt, and the absence of governance from Libya to Yemen, were “a boon to Islamic extremists across both the Middle East and North Africa.”

Mr. Morell is gentle about most of the politicians he dealt with — he expresses admiration for both Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama, though he accuses former Vice President Dick Cheney of deliberately implying a connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq that the C.I.A. had concluded probably did not exist. But when it comes to the events leading up to the Bush administration’s decision to go to war in Iraq, he is critical of his own agency.

Mr. Morell concludes that the Bush White House did not have to twist intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s alleged effort to rekindle the country’s work on weapons of mass destruction.

“The view that hard-liners in the Bush administration forced the intelligence community into its position on W.M.D. is just flat wrong,” he writes. “No one pushed. The analysts were already there and they had been there for years, long before Bush came to office.”