Fascinating study, and the journal article is free online[0]. It's an observational study, but of a single occupation and large N, with many other factors accounted for[1]. My take is that coffee, like other psychoactive substances, contains powerful chemicals that are likely to have some effect on total mortality. I will stick to my two cups a day.
[1] The regression models included calendar time in 2-y intervals as the time scale, and were stratified by age in years. In the multivariable analysis, we further adjusted for body mass index (BMI), physical activity, overall dietary
pattern (aHEI), total energy intake, smoking status, sugar-sweetened beverage consumption and alcohol consumption, all of which were updated from follow-up questionnaires.
How did they correct for people who reduced their coffee use because of failing health? I mean, have they proven once and for all that drinking coffee is good for you, or just that healthy people drink more coffee?
When you are diagnosed with hypertension, diabetes, heart disease etc, you tend to get the advice to drink less coffee. Older people start drinking less coffee as their health declines because it makes them jittery.
In everyday English, when someone mentions sugar, they are probably talking about sucrose aka 'table sugar'. And you are correct that sucrose consists of a glucose and fructose molecule bonded together.
In a more...official or scientific context, "Sugar is the generalized name for sweet, short-chain, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food." as Wikipedia puts it. That means that sucrose, glucose and fructose (and many others) are all considered to be sugar.
Maybe I missed the point, but you seem to be implying that you need to eat things with sugar mentioned on the label on a regular basis to keep your brain functioning normally.
As much as I love coffee and I'm happy to hear that drinking it is actually healthy, I think I'm just personally too sensitive to caffeine for it to be beneficial overall. My baseline stress level goes way up even with one cup a day and I have a much harder time falling and staying asleep.
I've heard that the L-Theanine [1] in green tea is responsible for a calmer caffeine effect. Although I haven't tried it, I've heard that you can get the same results by taking a supplement before your morning coffee.
I second this, and have used it for years with caffeine for this exact reason. By itself it also has an anti-anxiolytic and calming effect, and has been used to treat ADHD as well.
If you want to try it out, make sure you get Suntheanine. A dose that works for many is twice the theanine than caffeine, but YMMV.
I use L-Theanine and straight caffeine pills (100mg) as my preferred source of caffeine, it works very well. You get the alertness of caffeine without the annoying jittery feeling side effects.
I like the taste of coffee as well but its caffeine is too jaring (compared to tea), so sometimes I drink decaf. Most decaf coffee is kind of meh. A few months ago I found a new one I like better (I think they tout some kind of cold water process for decaffenating). The taste is better but still different from normal coffee.
Try decaf beans, if they're available in your local market (I buy them prepackaged in the supermarket here in the Netherlands). Grind them just before making the coffee and you won't taste the difference with 'real' coffee.
How much time are you leaving between when you drink the coffee and go to sleep? If you drink it only before noon, then assuming you sleep somewhere around 10 PM - 2 AM, most of the caffeine should be out of your system.
I think I must be particularly sensitive to caffeine because even if I only have one cup in the morning I notice I still don't sleep as well. It may not be due to the caffeine directly but because of feeling agitated earlier in the day.
However, cafestol potentially also has beneficial health effects, so it is not necessarily bad. I'm not aware of any study comparing health outcomes (as opposed to blood test results) of filtered vs. non-filtered coffee. This latest study does not distinguish between them.
Substance addiction would not necessarily affect mortality.
In fact, addiction isn't necessarily bad for health at all, if you reliably feed it every day, and the beneficial effects outweigh the negatives one. For example, consuming moderate amounts of caffeine every day, but always at least 6-8 hours before bed.
I would say "don't drink Starbucks" and you be half there.
Regular coffee in small portions has only a few calories and in the worst case scenario help you with digestion and bowel movement. But what those "kids" drink to start a day with has very little with coffee. When you get some moca-frappucino double-latte expresso with caramel syrup and whip cream on the top, you are scoring plenty of taste and about 500 calories. It's more than breakfast meal should have! And all this excessive sugar and fat definitely can't be helping health-wise.
I don't see Starbucks as a coffee company. I see them as perfectionists at blending (similarly, Coca-cola is not in a business of soda, but rather transportation (and they are genius at it), because frankly anyone can blend sugar with cola penuts and water - but the detail is in cheap distribution).
There was an article somewhere on the web that all those ingredients you can have while ordering your coffee can be mixed at 40,000 different combinations. Think about it. Why the heck any company would go through a trouble of giving you so many option when they "just sell the coffee". Because majority of their customers do not drink coffee "'cause they need it". They drink it purely for taste! Of course, it comes with a brilliant reasoning: "oh, I need this coffee to start a productive day", even if in reality you only need a pure coffee and maybe little bit of cream and sugar, for taste. 10 calories max. Not a coffee-tasting sugar bomb full of addons, fats and preservatives.
I agree so much. Starbucks and co are definitely not what I would consider coffee shops. I drink coffee because it has an effect on me (as well as a delicious taste, no caramel syrup required), and I can feel its effect very quickly. Starbucks coffees have the same effect on me as eating sweets; no wake-up effect, just a guaranteed sugar crash in a few hours. I was never a fan but I avoid it completely these days.
I mean, I can quit it any time, but I feel like shit. I can choose not to drink it, I don't get any cravings, but I just feel tired and get headaches more frequently. So I choose to drink coffee. But it's a choice...
The main change recently has been an update to the ACC/AHA LDL guidelines about LDL targets. Previously, there were hard targets that the doctor was trying to reach, in particular the 70mg/dl target was considered "optimal" and doctors strived to get their patients down to that.
In reality, it's become clear that there is no clinical evidence that an LDL that low is required. Certainly decreasing it from a high level (150+) has been shown to be a good idea (in most cases...it's complicated). But once you've decreased a patients LDL to a lower level, the clinical benefit of hitting 70 is nebulous.
So the new recommendations have dropped many of the hard targets, and recommend a more case-by-case evaluation. E.g. if your patient has a high LDL and you put them on a statin, they start exercising, eating better, and levels come down to 80mg/dl ... well, that's probably fine. They are in good shape, monitor and back off the statins.
A major reason for the change is because you'd see people on statins and other cholesterol meds for years. These drugs are very safe and low side-effect, and when combined with hard targets, doctors just "leave" patients on statins forever. But despite being safe, you shouldn't be on a chronic medication and there are other risks. So the new guidelines are trying to encourage doctors to use statins more sparingly.
I drank a moderate amount of coffee but it gave me heartburn both the acid and the caffeine caused my GERD to be bad so I cut back and switched to decaf now my GERD is 99% gone.
But I may quit since it's decaffeinated using methylene chloride which doesn't look very gut friendly or maybe I just discovered a cure for GERD.
Choose coffee which has been decaffeinated using a safe process such as Swiss Water. There are even some beans which taste very close to proper coffee after decaffeination.
I agree but the Swiss water decaf method is hard to find or that method is not stated (So I assume it's the cheap way). I really don't drink enough to go out of my way finding it.
I'm skeptical that it is sound to just throw out smokers and make a claim about coffee health benefits.
By taking people that use a lot of one common addictive substance (caffeine) and none of another (nicotine) they might just be selecting people with low potential for addiction/high will power. I believe those kinds of people might have lower mortality rates for reasons other than coffee consumption.
Just want to tell my experience here. Last Tuesday, I ordered a Cappuccino (strong). And I lit up a cigarette with it. Just after few minutes coming back to my work desk, I felt extreme headache and I fell from my seat unconscious. I was taken to a hospital near by and the doctor said your blood pressure is way higher than normal. (160/100) precisely. I believe that happened because of excess nicotine because I had no history of such blood pressure problem. I might be wrong but that was the case.
Yes, I think that coffee-consumption could simply be a label that brings in other lifestyle factors. However, even among the non-smokers, the meta-study did find a difference between no-coffee and moderate-coffee groups. That may be pointing towards some of those 1000 compounds for further study...
It's very common to remove smokers from studies like this (anything looking at mortality). Smoking increases your chance of so many health issues: heart disease, lung cancer, COPD, high blood pressure, stroke, aortic aneurysm, general infection due to chronic inflammation, etc etc. It's well documented and pretty unambiguous. If you smoke, your risk of all the above increases dramatically. Which means as a researcher you can't leave these people in a study looking at mortality rates since they would confound the results too much.
Basically, the risk of confounding your results with smoking-related mortality is a bigger problem than biasing your population with fewer people who consume addictive substances.
Source: I'm an ex-molecular biologist, my significant other is a PA.
Excluding smokers can cause a confounding variable, not the other way around.
A better choice of word would be "obscure", as including them will make it harder to reach significance (though the end result should be the same, if the variable was not confounding).
Oops, sorry, you're right. It was very early this morning and pre-coffee when I wrote that, was paraphrasing colloquially instead of technically (and not thinking) :)
Another simple approach is that the 'cultural context' of coffee drinkers, and the perception of oneself as productive, is going to lead to a more healthy nutrition & lifestyle, to fit the pattern. I believe people naturally are harmonious in their behavior.
I fight nasty withdrawal symptoms like severe headache, fatigue, and rheumatic pains right now after not drinking coffee for two days. It feels like a really bad flu. From experience I know that this will be better very soon.
That is the reason why I want to give up coffee completely. I don't want to be addicted to a substance. I don't like to get headache or feel tired only because I choose to not drink coffee for a day. Maybe there will be a day when I can not get a coffee.
I don't drink that much coffee. A pot of coffee in the morning and usually 2 - 3 espressos during the day. I guess I am sensitive to it.
> I don't drink that much coffee. A pot of coffee in the morning and usually 2 - 3 espressos during the day. I guess I am sensitive to it.
That is a lot of coffee. I have an Americano in the morning. If I have two it's not great for my stomach and if I have two in the morning I really better not have one again until five. If you're drinking it as your drink rather than as a stimulant try switching to tea.
I agree, I'd say that's a lot. I have two shots a day (either espressos or americanos, usually one of each) and I find that if I have a third I always feel terrible. I get agitated and jittery, so I guess that's a way to control my intake because I always stop at 2 now.
I am a skinny person, and I drink only 2 cups of coffee per day, tops, and I suffer the exact same withdrawal symptoms. Once I feel the symptoms it's too late, Advil doesn't help, coffee doesn't help, I can't look at screens for long, all I can really do is lay in bed and try to sleep it off.
However, I've learned that I have a window where I can sense symptoms might onset in the next couple of hours, and if I take an Advil then I'll avoid the symptoms.
I really need to try the nootropics everyone recommends. Coffee really only helps me power through semi-mindless work, if I need true clarity and original thinking I have to get comfortable in a quiet place and let my mind wander, and coffee doesn't help with that. (And while we're here I'll just say that's why I'm an advocate of remote setups for programmers, unless you only have semi-mindless work to do at your office).
walk yourself down on the caffeine addiction slowly. I alternate between regular and decaf and avoid all other products with caffeine. The key is making sure to take it down slowly and be consistent. For me that means caffeinated before lunch and all decaf drinks (water is decaf, right) afterward.
Your body can be trained to new levels, the difficulty is actually completing the training. Most people either forget or try to jump to the end. The only thing to ever quit cold turkey is tobacco
Some people process caffeine better than others maybe you are on the high end of the sensitivity scale.
I know a few sips of coffee and the caffeine make my heart pound. I only started drinking coffee ten years ago mostly cappuccino but I still am greatly affected by caffeine.
Cafes are a great place to socialise. I took up coffee drinking a few years ago to be a part of this ecosystem. It took me 2 years of 5 coffees a week (close to 1 a day) to get used to caffeine.
I experienced increased heart rate, sweating, delayed sleep (even 8 hours after a coffee).
These days, I still need to drink coffee at least 6h before sleep, but I don't find myself getting wound up after 1 cup anymore. Two cups is a different matter.
I actually got to the point where I had to drink coffee to be able to sleep. I was at Starbucks near close and got a venti latte with six shots. I said to the cute barista girl it was to help me sleep but I think she thought I was being sarcastic, she left that week so I am left with the thought that she thought I was a dick.
I can't recall where it is but a US University has a coffee room where many inventions were thought of mainly due to the social nature and brains revved up by coffee.
I went near-caffeine-free the last two weeks: Two shots of espresso in the morning, only decaf after that. (Fortunately any coffee shop worth their salt has decaf beans available.)
What has surprised me is that I am no longer oversleeping on my days off. Before, I was sleeping until 12-1pm to catch up on sleep debt incurred during the week, and I would wake up bleary-eyed and tired. Now, I wake up around 9-10am (which coincides with my wake-up time on work days), way before my alarm clock, and I actually feel quite rested.
Note that this is without adjusting my bedtime schedule at all. As someone who's been on caffeine most of his life and whose late sleep schedule is a veritable personality trait by now, this came as a surprise.
These studies that equate lower mortality with good for you ( that is always the implication ) are quite harmful I think. When people say "I just read something that says coffee is good for you again" that's where the harm is done. This says only that you may die a little later in life, the question of whether it is good for you is alltogether separate. Now it may be that things that make you live longer are generally good for you in the comprehensive sense, but there are better ways to measure that.
73 comments
[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 139 ms ] thread[0] http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/early/2015/11/10/CIRCULA...
[1] The regression models included calendar time in 2-y intervals as the time scale, and were stratified by age in years. In the multivariable analysis, we further adjusted for body mass index (BMI), physical activity, overall dietary pattern (aHEI), total energy intake, smoking status, sugar-sweetened beverage consumption and alcohol consumption, all of which were updated from follow-up questionnaires.
When you are diagnosed with hypertension, diabetes, heart disease etc, you tend to get the advice to drink less coffee. Older people start drinking less coffee as their health declines because it makes them jittery.
Tasty and prevents too much of sugar fat intake.
Brown sugar is definitely better as a sweetener compare to the white refined sugar as all the healthy parts are stripped.
In a more...official or scientific context, "Sugar is the generalized name for sweet, short-chain, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food." as Wikipedia puts it. That means that sucrose, glucose and fructose (and many others) are all considered to be sugar.
For some reason tea doesn't affect me as much.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theanine
If you want to try it out, make sure you get Suntheanine. A dose that works for many is twice the theanine than caffeine, but YMMV.
http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics
It says, drink lot of coffee but what about caffeine addiction?
Also, should I filter the coffee as it increases LDL cholestrol? Some even say cholestrol is not that bad.
Also, is 5-9% better mortality rate worth considering?
What about other stuff people with better mortality consumed? Did you know the effects of those substances on mortality?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cafestol
However, cafestol potentially also has beneficial health effects, so it is not necessarily bad. I'm not aware of any study comparing health outcomes (as opposed to blood test results) of filtered vs. non-filtered coffee. This latest study does not distinguish between them.
In fact, addiction isn't necessarily bad for health at all, if you reliably feed it every day, and the beneficial effects outweigh the negatives one. For example, consuming moderate amounts of caffeine every day, but always at least 6-8 hours before bed.
Regular coffee in small portions has only a few calories and in the worst case scenario help you with digestion and bowel movement. But what those "kids" drink to start a day with has very little with coffee. When you get some moca-frappucino double-latte expresso with caramel syrup and whip cream on the top, you are scoring plenty of taste and about 500 calories. It's more than breakfast meal should have! And all this excessive sugar and fat definitely can't be helping health-wise.
I don't see Starbucks as a coffee company. I see them as perfectionists at blending (similarly, Coca-cola is not in a business of soda, but rather transportation (and they are genius at it), because frankly anyone can blend sugar with cola penuts and water - but the detail is in cheap distribution).
There was an article somewhere on the web that all those ingredients you can have while ordering your coffee can be mixed at 40,000 different combinations. Think about it. Why the heck any company would go through a trouble of giving you so many option when they "just sell the coffee". Because majority of their customers do not drink coffee "'cause they need it". They drink it purely for taste! Of course, it comes with a brilliant reasoning: "oh, I need this coffee to start a productive day", even if in reality you only need a pure coffee and maybe little bit of cream and sugar, for taste. 10 calories max. Not a coffee-tasting sugar bomb full of addons, fats and preservatives.
I mean, I can quit it any time, but I feel like shit. I can choose not to drink it, I don't get any cravings, but I just feel tired and get headaches more frequently. So I choose to drink coffee. But it's a choice...
Those are the symptoms of physical addiction.
The main change recently has been an update to the ACC/AHA LDL guidelines about LDL targets. Previously, there were hard targets that the doctor was trying to reach, in particular the 70mg/dl target was considered "optimal" and doctors strived to get their patients down to that.
In reality, it's become clear that there is no clinical evidence that an LDL that low is required. Certainly decreasing it from a high level (150+) has been shown to be a good idea (in most cases...it's complicated). But once you've decreased a patients LDL to a lower level, the clinical benefit of hitting 70 is nebulous.
So the new recommendations have dropped many of the hard targets, and recommend a more case-by-case evaluation. E.g. if your patient has a high LDL and you put them on a statin, they start exercising, eating better, and levels come down to 80mg/dl ... well, that's probably fine. They are in good shape, monitor and back off the statins.
A major reason for the change is because you'd see people on statins and other cholesterol meds for years. These drugs are very safe and low side-effect, and when combined with hard targets, doctors just "leave" patients on statins forever. But despite being safe, you shouldn't be on a chronic medication and there are other risks. So the new guidelines are trying to encourage doctors to use statins more sparingly.
Some more reading on the new guidelines:
- http://emorymedicinemagazine.emory.edu/issues/2014/spring/fe... - http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/814152
But I may quit since it's decaffeinated using methylene chloride which doesn't look very gut friendly or maybe I just discovered a cure for GERD.
By taking people that use a lot of one common addictive substance (caffeine) and none of another (nicotine) they might just be selecting people with low potential for addiction/high will power. I believe those kinds of people might have lower mortality rates for reasons other than coffee consumption.
Basically, the risk of confounding your results with smoking-related mortality is a bigger problem than biasing your population with fewer people who consume addictive substances.
Source: I'm an ex-molecular biologist, my significant other is a PA.
Excluding smokers can cause a confounding variable, not the other way around.
A better choice of word would be "obscure", as including them will make it harder to reach significance (though the end result should be the same, if the variable was not confounding).
The simple act of moving lowers the risk factors for cardiovascular disease.
5 cups of coffee per day is going to get most people moving.
You could even hypothesise that people who live more hectic lives (and thus move more) are likely to drink more coffee.
That is the reason why I want to give up coffee completely. I don't want to be addicted to a substance. I don't like to get headache or feel tired only because I choose to not drink coffee for a day. Maybe there will be a day when I can not get a coffee.
I don't drink that much coffee. A pot of coffee in the morning and usually 2 - 3 espressos during the day. I guess I am sensitive to it.
That is a lot of coffee. I have an Americano in the morning. If I have two it's not great for my stomach and if I have two in the morning I really better not have one again until five. If you're drinking it as your drink rather than as a stimulant try switching to tea.
Addicted to caffeine for 30 years and counting...
However, I've learned that I have a window where I can sense symptoms might onset in the next couple of hours, and if I take an Advil then I'll avoid the symptoms.
I really need to try the nootropics everyone recommends. Coffee really only helps me power through semi-mindless work, if I need true clarity and original thinking I have to get comfortable in a quiet place and let my mind wander, and coffee doesn't help with that. (And while we're here I'll just say that's why I'm an advocate of remote setups for programmers, unless you only have semi-mindless work to do at your office).
Happy to read this :-) > ...researchers found that drinking coffee—regular or decaf is associated with an overall lower risk of mortality.
(An approximate quote from my doctor)
I would call 1 pot and 2 espressos a quite large amount of coffee.
Your body can be trained to new levels, the difficulty is actually completing the training. Most people either forget or try to jump to the end. The only thing to ever quit cold turkey is tobacco
Wow, I thought taking a 200mg tablet with a glass of milk every morning was excessive.
I know a few sips of coffee and the caffeine make my heart pound. I only started drinking coffee ten years ago mostly cappuccino but I still am greatly affected by caffeine.
I can't recall where it is but a US University has a coffee room where many inventions were thought of mainly due to the social nature and brains revved up by coffee.
And there is also a theory of the age of Coffee Enlightenment in England in the 17th/18th century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_coffeehouses_in_the_17...
What has surprised me is that I am no longer oversleeping on my days off. Before, I was sleeping until 12-1pm to catch up on sleep debt incurred during the week, and I would wake up bleary-eyed and tired. Now, I wake up around 9-10am (which coincides with my wake-up time on work days), way before my alarm clock, and I actually feel quite rested.
Note that this is without adjusting my bedtime schedule at all. As someone who's been on caffeine most of his life and whose late sleep schedule is a veritable personality trait by now, this came as a surprise.