When we parametrize complex systems in studies such as this, I feel we tend to lose the forest for the trees.
Okay, so maybe 25 cups of coffee a day won't destroy my heart.
But this is what happens when I have 5 cups of coffee a day:
1) I get jumpy and I feel anxious. If I drink too much I start to feel what I can only describe as existential dread (I know it's weird).
2) I can't hold on to things because my hands are shaking.
3) I don't sleep as well at night, even if I don't drink any coffee after 12pm.
4) My lymph nodes start to swell. (This last one was really weird for me when I found out that it was caffeine that was causing the lumps in my breast. I'm pretty sure it's the caffeine since both times I had the lumps I quit coffee cold-turkey and the lumps disappeared.)
I now limit myself to two cups of coffee per day. If I'm feeling indulgent I may have a third cup, but that's not daily.
I think the point here is that people with heart disease needn't worry too much about coffee/caffeine intake. Heart disease affects a large part of the population and even among those who are not effected heart health is still something to be conscious of, especially in middle and old age.
Agreed, they're not condoning or advocating for high consumption. They're simply establishing that even when drinking absurd amounts of coffee you're not at increased risk, therefore it is ok to drink coffee.
That is wrong, what they say here is that arteries may not suffer by drinking coffee. But there is a lot of evidence pointing that all sorts of arythmias can be connected to caffeine intake...
Also, studies like this don’t how it’s heathy, they simply fail to demonstrate significant harm over the course of the study which is a very different thing.
A few years ago I just decided to give up caffeine entirely. It wasn't worth the impact on my sleep or the stop-everything-and-find-caffeine headaches I got. I became uncomfortable with the fact that, in some small way, a substance exerted that much control over my life.
> When we parametrize complex systems in studies such as this, I feel we tend to lose the forest for the trees.
I think that's an unfair accusation. The study set out to answer a very specific question, and did so. Knowledge often progresses by building big pictures out of the answers to lots of little questions. In terms of your forest metaphor, I would say that the study is "identifying some specific groups of trees in the forest".
I love the taste of coffee, had cafe au lait as a kid, then brewed, then french press and stove top moka pot. The last two methods slowly made me sick. It turns out when not using a paper filter, things like cafestol makes it through the process in higher concentration and after a few days of consumption I would get intense pain near my liver/gallbladder, for about 30 minutes I would be on the bathroom floor waiting for it to pass, often only vomiting helped. I stopped coffee and those symptoms stopped. Later tried poured over coffee with a paper filter , after a few days those symptoms would come back. Decaf doesn't help. Now in my late 30s I can't have coffee, tea or chocolate. The caffeine/theine/theobromine was not good either, anxiety, headaches, muscle twitching, heart palpitations, irritability, leading to, sorry for the detail, dehydration and hard stools. It's been a year since I've stopped, and I feel serene, easier to stay hydrated, better sleep and great bowel movement. If someone can invent the impossible burger equivalent of coffee (no caffeine, cafestol, roasting carcinogens ...) I'll be first in line, not sure how long that line would be though.
sure, pack of cigs a day u can also become 100+ years old.
don't forget about the impact on your mental processes and other effects these substances have on you though. they are arguably much worse than cutting off a few of your life years...
i used to drink loads of coffee. now i only drink it on occasion, and really it's helped my attention become a lot more stable. caffeine and other substances have varying levels of effect on people. for me it's pretty intense, but for the person next to me, they feel nothing of it.
long story short: listen to your own mind and body when it comes to your diet. it will tell you what is good and bad if you listen carefully. if you don't listen, perhaps it will become ill as a form of yelling at you to get your attention... ;D
> Professor Metin Avkiran, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said in a press release: "There are several conflicting studies saying different things about coffee, and it can be difficult to filter what we should believe and what we shouldn't. This research will hopefully put some of the media reports in perspective, as it rules out one of the potential detrimental effects of coffee on our arteries."
They aren't saying that drinking coffee doesn't have problems, all they are saying is that it doesn't appear to affect the arteries. They aren't trying to provide an anecdote about simple living, it's testing a hypothesis.
Having not drunk an ANSI cup of ISO coffee, what is the approximate amount being discussed? A pack a day (of ground beans)? How many GreatBrittan cups are in, e.g. a typical Swedes' coffee?
'cup' typically refers to a demitasse in colloquial coffeespeak, but this is a scientific study, so ymmv. should be roundabouts 100mlish for demitasse and 200ml for US cup, give or take
There isn't a ANSI/ISO standard to my knowledge. But some ramblings that might help you ballpark it:
One shot of espresso equates to roughly 100mg of caffeine - give or take (a lot).
>How many GreatBrittan cups
Assuming you're British...if you walk Costa and ask for a small black...you're getting around 2 cups worth of caffeine. Just under 200mg. They're not likely to serve you anything north of 400mg.
Tolerances for caffeine are all over the place. I know that personally at around 1000mg per day things go for focused/wired to uncomfortable for me.
I'm curious if this was done with filtered drip coffee vs espresso. I'm a bit ignorant on this subject but I've read some arguments that drip coffee is filtered & therefore may be better for your heart as it filters out certain elements.
I don't have a reference on this, purely looking to learn more about the differences.
I started coffee late in life. 2 cups a day is my thing, all before lunch because after that it messes with my sleep.
But I've worked with people where effectively there wasn't a moment in the day they weren't drinking coffee and they were going to get more pretty much constantly.
I didn't realize how much people drink until I started.
My dad would set a pot of coffee on a timer at night. In the morning, he'd get up and pour himself a cup of coffee, pour the rest in a thermos, and set another pot of coffee, most of which also went in to the thermos, which would be empty by the end of the day.
Yes. If I don't manage myself I could drink 6-8 cups. Basically I would go make a coffee, sit down, reach for the cup to drink and realize that it's already empty. Now I mix in decaf and limit myself to 5
> I find I just like to sip on something constantly, and water gives me a headache.
I'd see a doctor about that, water shouldn't give you a headache unless you drink much more than 6-8 cans worth a day, you might have a sodium deficiency or have something else wrong. Maybe even a sugar come down from the 6-8 cans of soda which is far from healthy.
I drink about a couple of liters per day, sometimes less, depending on the mood. I think I have no caffeine sensitivity at all, since I have normal BP, no sleep problems, and am able to stop drinking all caffeinated beverages for a few weeks without any (obvious) problems (did it several times after getting tired of the taste).
All these personal anecdotes (when I stopped drinking coffee, my wife returned to me, and I won in Powerball!) sound very strange to me.
I'm about at the 25 cups point (2-3 pots of coffee a day), and I too have no issues, drinking sunup to sundown (and have done so for close to 20 years).
People greatly enjoy feeling like they made a worthwhile sacrifice and giving up coffee is an easier achievement than running a half-marathon (though that one is also a popular cause of returning wives and Powerball wins).
Anyway, I'm like you, and actually once said "I have no caffeine sensitivity LIKE AT ALL", and then I cut down from "last coffee before dawn" to "around 1.5L" and the amount of psychological side effects I stopped having did change my life (no Powerball involved). At the time, of course, I would have called such side effects "that's just me". So, mileage varying. And some people are super sensitive to that somewhat racing adrenaline feeling, even though it is not actually dangerous.
Espresso shots. Yes, there are some of us that enjoy coffee. In certain countries within Europe, I saw people drink coffee after dinner...didn't make any sense to me, but it seemed to be a common cultural thing.
I used to work across from a Starbucks and I'd routinely have three venti light brews over the day, 60 oz is 5 cups. And Starbucks was very high in caffeine content for drip coffee, plus light roasts have more caffeine.
For me, it was something I could sip all day long, especially as black coffee is a tasty zero-calorie beverage, and at least in the morning I'd feel that rush of focus. Eventually had to give it up due to insomnia.
>The research also showed that moderate and heavy coffee drinkers were most likely to be male, smoke and consume alcohol regularly.
So this shows an obvious problem with the study. They did not rule out co-factors. If the moderate to heavy coffee drinkers are also smoke and consume alcohol regularly, then this already puts them at a higher risk for heart disease, and likely completely dwarfs any effect of caffeine.
I quit caffeine altogether a while ago, and it's made a huge difference to my quality of life and work.
When I wake up, I'm actually awake. When I go to bed, I'm actually sleepy. I don't wake up several times during the night anymore, and I'm not falling sleep mid-afternoon ever day.
I've had some brief breaks recently, and abstaining leads to actually feeling tired around bedtime, falling asleep in a few minutes and waking up feeling very refreshed. I'd recommend every regular caffeine user give it a try.
This article does not mention "mg", "milligram", or even just the word "caffeine", not links out to the actual research. So whoever upvoted this to the front page: shame on you. We can be more judicial than that.
Coffee Drinking Irrelevant To Heart Health, Unsure Why We Were Always Writing About The Health Effects Of Coffee Or Why We Repeatedly Rotated Through Every Possible Position On What They May Or May Not Have Been
I drank five to six cups a day, and felt like I desperately needed it, and scoffed at anyone who suggested I try getting by with less.
At some point I stumbled on an article about the adenosine receptors in your brain will actually compensate for this much caffeine by just growing more of them. I also read that you can actually "kill" these extra receptors by going cold turkey for a week.
So I did it, and it sucked (the second and third days were the worst). But that was a year ago and I now get an equal if not better effect from two cups a coffee each day.
I didn't have to go cold turkey; I simply stopped drinking as much and my receptors managed.
The funny thing is, the craving for coffee when I'm at work is when I'm stressed out and want control over something. Well, coffee has a very neat little cause-effect system that would give me something to change reliably.
The problem is, I don't even particularly like the effects of that second or third cup of coffee; I just wanted the control to change my state of mind.
I'm not perfect and I still do reach for that 2nd or 3rd cup sometimes but by realizing I'm a better coworker with just the one first thing in the morning helps a lot.
This article is plastered all over the web with similar title and content wording as if it was copy-pasted and slightly edited numerous times. Sadly no article links.
I don't have any links to hand but I'm fairly darn certain that arrhythmias start showing up way before anyone gets to 25 cups per day, not to mention fluid balance/kidney issues, which can lead to congestive heart failure.
TLDR; arterial stiffness is only one measure of "heart health".
80 comments
[ 171 ms ] story [ 1121 ms ] threadOkay, so maybe 25 cups of coffee a day won't destroy my heart.
But this is what happens when I have 5 cups of coffee a day:
1) I get jumpy and I feel anxious. If I drink too much I start to feel what I can only describe as existential dread (I know it's weird).
2) I can't hold on to things because my hands are shaking.
3) I don't sleep as well at night, even if I don't drink any coffee after 12pm.
4) My lymph nodes start to swell. (This last one was really weird for me when I found out that it was caffeine that was causing the lumps in my breast. I'm pretty sure it's the caffeine since both times I had the lumps I quit coffee cold-turkey and the lumps disappeared.)
I now limit myself to two cups of coffee per day. If I'm feeling indulgent I may have a third cup, but that's not daily.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2748160/
I've had conversations about an issue with someone at work and the response was "Three cups today huh man?"
I get a bit worked up sometimes with that third cup.
Not weird at all. It’s that free-form, nameless, unspecified anxiety.
I think that's an unfair accusation. The study set out to answer a very specific question, and did so. Knowledge often progresses by building big pictures out of the answers to lots of little questions. In terms of your forest metaphor, I would say that the study is "identifying some specific groups of trees in the forest".
Caffeine content will vary widely depending on the type of bean, roasting time, and the amount of ground beans used to brew the cup.
don't forget about the impact on your mental processes and other effects these substances have on you though. they are arguably much worse than cutting off a few of your life years...
i used to drink loads of coffee. now i only drink it on occasion, and really it's helped my attention become a lot more stable. caffeine and other substances have varying levels of effect on people. for me it's pretty intense, but for the person next to me, they feel nothing of it.
long story short: listen to your own mind and body when it comes to your diet. it will tell you what is good and bad if you listen carefully. if you don't listen, perhaps it will become ill as a form of yelling at you to get your attention... ;D
They aren't saying that drinking coffee doesn't have problems, all they are saying is that it doesn't appear to affect the arteries. They aren't trying to provide an anecdote about simple living, it's testing a hypothesis.
1. I have the feeling both this study and the ones it is trying to contradict are not reproducible, like 99% of other health food type studies
2. Your kidneys are probably going to be the bigger sufferers in this scenario
One shot of espresso equates to roughly 100mg of caffeine - give or take (a lot).
>How many GreatBrittan cups
Assuming you're British...if you walk Costa and ask for a small black...you're getting around 2 cups worth of caffeine. Just under 200mg. They're not likely to serve you anything north of 400mg.
Tolerances for caffeine are all over the place. I know that personally at around 1000mg per day things go for focused/wired to uncomfortable for me.
25 cups...is at least double that.
I don't have a reference on this, purely looking to learn more about the differences.
But I've worked with people where effectively there wasn't a moment in the day they weren't drinking coffee and they were going to get more pretty much constantly.
I didn't realize how much people drink until I started.
I find I just like to sip on something constantly, and water gives me a headache.
I'd see a doctor about that, water shouldn't give you a headache unless you drink much more than 6-8 cans worth a day, you might have a sodium deficiency or have something else wrong. Maybe even a sugar come down from the 6-8 cans of soda which is far from healthy.
Not a conscious effort... Just sorta happens.
All these personal anecdotes (when I stopped drinking coffee, my wife returned to me, and I won in Powerball!) sound very strange to me.
Anyway, I'm like you, and actually once said "I have no caffeine sensitivity LIKE AT ALL", and then I cut down from "last coffee before dawn" to "around 1.5L" and the amount of psychological side effects I stopped having did change my life (no Powerball involved). At the time, of course, I would have called such side effects "that's just me". So, mileage varying. And some people are super sensitive to that somewhat racing adrenaline feeling, even though it is not actually dangerous.
For me, it was something I could sip all day long, especially as black coffee is a tasty zero-calorie beverage, and at least in the morning I'd feel that rush of focus. Eventually had to give it up due to insomnia.
So this shows an obvious problem with the study. They did not rule out co-factors. If the moderate to heavy coffee drinkers are also smoke and consume alcohol regularly, then this already puts them at a higher risk for heart disease, and likely completely dwarfs any effect of caffeine.
Stiffening of the arteries was not what the doctor at the emergency room mentioned when he told me that I needed to reduce my caffeine intake.
Common caffeine contents: Double Espresso ~100mg Starbucks small coffee ~200mg
When I wake up, I'm actually awake. When I go to bed, I'm actually sleepy. I don't wake up several times during the night anymore, and I'm not falling sleep mid-afternoon ever day.
Coffee Drinking Irrelevant To Heart Health, Unsure Why We Were Always Writing About The Health Effects Of Coffee Or Why We Repeatedly Rotated Through Every Possible Position On What They May Or May Not Have Been
At some point I stumbled on an article about the adenosine receptors in your brain will actually compensate for this much caffeine by just growing more of them. I also read that you can actually "kill" these extra receptors by going cold turkey for a week.
So I did it, and it sucked (the second and third days were the worst). But that was a year ago and I now get an equal if not better effect from two cups a coffee each day.
The funny thing is, the craving for coffee when I'm at work is when I'm stressed out and want control over something. Well, coffee has a very neat little cause-effect system that would give me something to change reliably.
The problem is, I don't even particularly like the effects of that second or third cup of coffee; I just wanted the control to change my state of mind.
I'm not perfect and I still do reach for that 2nd or 3rd cup sometimes but by realizing I'm a better coworker with just the one first thing in the morning helps a lot.
Eventually I found this PDF: https://heart.bmj.com/content/heartjnl/105/Suppl_6/A8.2.full...
It doesn't go into too much detail on the research.
TLDR; arterial stiffness is only one measure of "heart health".