Slashdot Mirror
Study Says Coffee Protects Against Cirrhosis
An anonymous reader writes "Good news for those who like both coffee and alcohol. In a recent study of more than 125,000 people an Oakland, CA medical team found that consuming coffee seems to help protect against alcoholic cirrhosis. The study was done based on people enrolled in a private northern California health care plan between 1978 and 1985." From the article: "People drinking one cup of coffee per day were, on average, 20% less likely to develop alcoholic cirrhosis. For people drinking two or three cups the reduction was 40%, and for those drinking four or more cups of coffee a day the reduction in risk was 80%."
Being I drink about 12-16 cups a day I'm glad to know my alcholism won't be doing much to me. I think I'll have a shot now followed by some starbucks
Infiltrated dot Net
obviously a healthier answer would be to cut back on the alcohol.
This report proves coffee is good, and tea is bad
hmm.. perhaps Starbucks is involved somewhere..
we drink neither and break our social and behavioral substance dependencies.
What doesn't kill you today only makes you stronger - until they find out that it too can kill you!
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
This is not a recommendation to drink coffee, nor is it a recommendation that the way to deal with heavy alcohol consumption is to drink more coffee,"
Ah yes, but does the study conclude that if I drink a lot of coffee that I am entitled to drink a lot of alcohol now?
God spoke to me.
That will be good to remember then when I'm having my caffeine induced coronary .
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Set me up with another Irish coffee barkeep, heavy on the Irish!
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I must drink beer.
Beer is the painkiller.
And beer is the little drink that brings total satisfaction.
I will drink my beer.
I will permit it to pass through me.
And where the beer has gone there will be nothing.
Only a hangover will remain.
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion,
It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed,
The hands acquire shakes, the shakes become a warning,
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.
Does it bother anyone else that the data in question is 21 years old? 1985 seems like an eternity ago - this from a guy born in 1982. I'm not a statistician or a doctor, but couldn't there have been a myriad of things that happened in between 1985 and now? Furthermore, if you drink coffee, most people I know drink at least 2 cups daily so I'm not sure you can draw any meaningful distinctions between 1 and 2 cups. Also, what about other caffeine sources like soda?
Drew Carey is a genuis!
Encasing your body in concrete has been shown to reduce your risk of injury due to personal assault.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/cirrhosis/DS00373 h osis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_liver_cirr
Research on coffee ... I smell a caffeine-based bias.
<Astro>rrrrruck!</Astro>
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
NPR also ran this story earlier today saying that people who drink 2 cups of coffee are better listeners than those who don't. We've been drinking this stuff for how long and we're just now figuring this stuff out? What will they find out next?
This just confirms something that many of us have known for years: beer and coffee have a very precise balance in the body. If you throw the balance off, then you feel like crap.
That's why before your first coffee of the morning, you feel bad. Then, you feel good once you've had your coffee. But by the time late-afternoon rolls around, you definitely feel like crap again and go for a beer. The beer makes you feel better until you go to bed. Rinse and repeat.
.... then a paper will be published on how coffee is a primary cause of cirrhosis
This reminds me of Mr. Burns Three Stooges Syndrome and how one illness blocks the effects of another in this case alcoholism and caffeine addiction.
Perhaps this blocks the metabolism of alchol by the liver, and you just pee it out. I would be suprised if the intermediate oxidation product acetaldehyde is what damages the tissue.
I believe that this is how the antidotes for ethylene glycol work.
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
Caffine GOOD!
No negative effects@!!!!
NONE NONE!!!!
Caffine GOOD!!!!
Whiskey, gin and brandy
With a glass I'm pretty handy
I'm trying to walk a straight line
On sour mash and cheap wine
So join me for a drink boys
We're gonna make a big noise
So don't worry about tomorrow
Take it today
Forget about the cheque
We'll get hell to pay
Have a drink on me (AC/DC)
Of course now, I will just chase my drinks with coffee!
Heart attack maybe, but Cirrhosis is in check!
This study makes me so confident, that I am even going to start smoking again and hope that pizza counters that!
COFFEEISGOODFORMEITSAVESMYLIVERSOMEONEKILLMEAAAAAA AH
Time to go write that term paper...no wait, it's not three in the morning yet. Chocolate coated espresso bean time!
Well, this explains why Grampa isn't dead yet. We were wondering...
U send me no more jobs:
1 1960.cms
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/16
I send U wife:
http://www.shaadi.com/
U mak wrd fltr 4 2 beat me , but u r btn by it urself.
or are they treating the results of this study a little like medical drugs?
e.g. - WARNING: The use of coffeine *may* keep you up all night, stunt your growth, dehydrate you, stain your teeth, create severe insomnia, give you the jitters, flush your face, or put you on edge.
However, go for your life - you won't get alcohol cirrohsis!
Actually, a lot of studies are coming out about luxury items and other meaningless crap at the moment. When are they going to stop wasting time on that and actually start figuring out weighter problems, such as geeky social ineptitude, time warps, and laser guns?
"Good news for those who like both coffee and alcohol. In a recent study of more than 125,000 people an Oakland, CA medical team found that consuming coffee seems to help protect against alcoholic cirrhosis. i DrNK smuCh, Ima gona Be InvincBL , *hicup*
Is the must used legal drug... Makes you addicted, if you drink coffee every day, any day try to let them... You can't.
Besides, i don't drink alcohol so, no problems for me.
It's more easier stop drinking alcohol that drink another drug more...
At least i think so.
ghostbar page.
Based on the way that study is described, it doesn't sound as though the data necessarily supports a clear-cut causality between coffee-drinking and cirrhosis reduction. They based the results on a questionnaire, after all, and many of those are far too broad (and too sloppily answered) to give precise data about an individual's real consumption of either alcohol or coffee.
The most that this data proves is a correlation between higher reported coffee consumption and reduced cirrhosis-- and there are a ton of other reasons why that might be the case. Maybe heavy drinkers of alcohol tend to under-report their consumption of other harmful substances (like caffeine) out of guilt. Maybe higher caffeine consumption makes heavy drinkers drink a little less. Maybe coffee-drinking indicates a more white-collar lifestyle, which in turn might indicate better education and healthier life habits, any of which might itself be responsible for the diminished cirrhosis. As usual, the pop-sci treatment jumps to an easy causal conclusion that's far from being warranted by the facts.
Well duh!
If you're drinking two cups of coffee with your Cheerios at breakfast, that's two Martinis that you're not drinking with your Cheerios at breakfast.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
To further support this data, I'd like to see the cirrhosis rate in a heavily caffinated area - like here in Seattle say, to that of the South, where the coffee is God-awful and undrinkable.
I'm sure we have less up here, even though we drink tons of strong beer too.
Strong beer + strong coffee = healthy, wealthy and wise
but i'm sure a lot of people forgot about this one already.. if you're gonna drink til you pass out remember to have a pot of joe in the morning to cure the hangover and keep your liver alive ;)
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Interesting how every week there is a new study that proves something is actually good for you (in some way or another, but usually not completely good for you) so that people can be justified in their actions. One day there will be a study that points out that pedophiles are less likely to contract AIDS and STD's than non-pedophiles, so if you are prone to pedophilia, you will be healthier (as long as you don't get caught).
People will justify their actions through rationalization right up to the day they die.
Coffee gives me a similar length word with two 'r' in it.
As an adjunct, they noted that consuming tea does not have a similar effect.
Doc: Nurse, this man's liver is failing! Get him four cups of coffee, strong and black!
Nurse: But, Doctor, he's caffeine intolerant - it says it interacts with his other meds.
Doc: Oh, ok, in that case, give it to me, I'll drink it.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
They based the results on a questionnaire, after all, and many of those are far too broad (and too sloppily answered) to give precise data about an individual's real consumption of either alcohol or coffee.
I'm not sure if you know this, but most human studies are heavily questionnaire oriented, and we do have a range of questionnaires, including self-administered (useful for embarrassing subjects), informant-administered (usually one's spouse or, in this case, perhaps your bartender and barrista), and clinician-administered (where a trained specialist asks you the questions and is watching for how you answer and evasiveness, and may have follow-up questions).
We can't go around and cage you up like we do mice, and accurately measure your caffeine and alcohol consumption. Human subjects have to consent, have to participate, and the level of invasiveness impacts the participation.
As to coffee-drinking being a white-collar lifestyle, in my experience, having worked in forestry, mines, road construction, computing, management, and research, I would say it's class neutral and exists in all levels - people who do manual work drink coffee at work, at lunch, and at the bar before heading home or when having breakfast - people who are white color do the same, just in a different manner. Your personal observations may be clouded by your limited experience in world travel and working in different occupations.
But, a good study would do comparisons in say Norway, Japan, USA, Canada, and Kenya just to be sure. And have a large enough study group that even when you sub-sample (say Canada, or maybe blue collar workers in urban areas versus rural areas) you still have significant populations.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
If only this story also touched on the NSA trying to use their unconstitutionally acquired data to find recreational drug users, I’d have the most on-topic .sig EVAR!
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Stick To Coffee and Alcohol
One question for the boffins then: what kind of coffee is more effective? The rich, tasty stuff that Europeans drink, or the brown-coloured water the Americans seem to prefer?
Just wondering - because if it's the latter, there's something wrong right there.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. -- G.B. Shaw
Sweet! So 17 beers helps prevent prostate cancer and coffee prevents cirrhosis... Besides the 30 trips to the bathroom a day from drinking a pot of coffee and 17 beers I'm all set!!!
Selection bias. They have no way for controlling the quantity of alcohol that these people consume NOR the number of years for which they consume it. Even alcoholics all drink different amounts of alcohol. Therefore you have no way of knowing if the coffee drinkers also tend to drink less alcohol (ergo, less damage to the liver), which is a very plausible explanation. The authors even admit they don't have a biologically plausible theory for why coffee might protect the liver.
And 20% is nothing with a sample size this small. An 80% drop when they drink 4 or more cups of coffee? Who has room for alcohol when they've drunk 4 cups of coffee per day? I'm willing to bet there's a huge drop in cirrhosis rates when someone eats a lot too.
There's a huge difference between association and causality, but lack of distinction results in hasty and flawed interpretations.
"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."
Coffee makes you feel better, AND has an addiction mechanism that automaticly reminds you that you need more, does it get any better than that ?
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Everyone is talking about the connection between coffee and Cirrhosis without examining how alcohol causes Cirrhosis. The trick that coffee is doing is marginally reversing the harmfull effects that cause Cirrhosis. Basically the alcohol depleats the nutrients that the liver needs, causing Cirrhosis. The coffee has some of the nutrients that alcohol removes. The better idea is to replenish ALL of the nutrients so as to feel no ill-effects from alchohol (as far as health is concerned).
1 01737-9453630?v=glance&n=283155
There is a great book writen by a professional nutritionist that discusses how this works in detail. The title is pretty cheesy but the work is solid. It is called, "Drink as Much as You Want and Live Longer" by Frederick M. Beyerlein.
Also a good web reference to debunk alot of alcohol related health myths (with the profesonal research to back it up) is at:
http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/index.html
Amazon link to "Drink as Much as You Want and Live Longer":
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/155950188X/002-7
laxisusous
I tend to assume "medical studies" check the basics, but...I wonder if they screwed up something obvious? I enjoy drinking coffee, and I do so on my personal time often. Percentage-wise though, basically all my coffee drinking takes place during work hours. I'll drink 1-3 large (16oz+) coffee's a day at work and only 1-2 small cups over a weekend. Maybe the people who seem healthier after this study are just people who worked more regularly over that time. Because it is much more difficult to drink while working, more work means less drinking. So if people work more they'll tend to drink more coffee and less alcohol. Maybe it's just the less-alcohol part?
How about 100% abstinence? No alcohol related problem whatsoever. And the problems of alcohol comsumption far outway any imaginary benefits.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Now I can undo what I did the night before.
Victory shall be mine!
Have to update the old joke about the ineffectiveness of using coffee to sober up.
Q: What do you get when you feed coffee to a drunk?
A: A wide-awake drunk (with a healthy liver.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I highly recommend coffee, tequila & Bailey's. This news explains why I was in such good shape when I drank it.
Funny you should mention headaches.
Here's why coffee might protect people from alcoholic liver disease.
Caffeine fights headaches (Anacin contains caffeine, btw).
More caffeine -> less headaches -> less taking of acetaminophen -> less liver disease.
Alcohol + acetaminophen is dangerous, alcohol induces CYP 2E1 which converts acetaminophen into a heptotoxin (NAPQI) which depletes glutathione, which causes liver damage.
N-Acetyl-Cysteine stops the liver damage too, it is used as a antidote to acetaminophen overdose.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
... what does a krona taste like?
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
I mean come on, you can only handle so much fluid. Sixteen cups of water a day will provide complete protection against alcoholic cirrosis of the liver...
Oh well, what the hell...
It seems to me much more likely that the stimulant properties of caffiene probably bring to coffee drinkers more waking hours as well as nervous muscle twitching/etc... and that it's the extra labor of the body which discourages horrendous liver damage... Hasn't good exercise already been shown to decrease the effects of this (and most other) disease?
[ you and I are ugly ]
Well if they're right, coffee & Bailey's ought to be a break even as far as the ol' liver is concerned.
Now I just wonder if 12 cups a day is enough to offset the single-malt habit... if so, I'm a hell of a lot healthier than I thought.
Pi Ran Out
It may just be the diuretic properties of coffee that cause you to go to the bathroom 400 times an hour, flushing your system, that helps too.
Humans are slow, innaccurate, and brilliant; computers are fast, acurrate, and dumb; together they are unbeatable
Show me a homeless drunkard that will buy four cups of coffee a day on his limited budget. Drinking lots of coffee on a regular basis correlates with the desire to get work done. And that puts a damper on the amount of alcohol you can ingest in the daytime.
In Norway, we usually add ethanol until the crown floats, or the cup is full, whatever comes first...
accept no limits but time
I think that people, who are drinking more than 2 or 3 cups of coffee a day in general don't have an great affinity to alcohol. That's maybe the reason for the 80% reduction of risk - they just didn't have enough time to drink lots of alcohol.
On the other hand... Even if it is true and the study belongs scientific requirements, a high load of coffe may cause other problems like keeping the victim sleepless or causing problems with cardivascular system. So it is not the right sign to create the illusion that an alcohol addicted (alkohol addiction is reason #1,#2 and #3 for cirrhosis) can avoid or reduce the risks by drinking an additional gallon of coffee.
The best way to avoid cirrhosis is to avoid alkohol in general or - if you think that alkohol is a "must" - to be careful.
Regards
Anonymous Coward
So your saying that what the medical community has mistaken for alcoholic cirrhosis all these years is actually caused by drinkers taking painkillers? There are a lot of drinkers who fight their hangovers with more alcohol. Presumably their livers are OK too.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
So I'm never going to get cirrhosis of the liver, but does anyone know what I can do about my insomnia?
What they're basically saying is that coffee greatly reduces your chances of getting cirrhosis. That's great, but what are the evils of drinking so much coffee ? Isn't caffeine bad for us ? I've been drinking tons of pop since I was a wee hacker kid, and to me caffeine withdrawal is no different from any other drug-induced malaise - i.e. headaches, soreness, confusion/distraction, homicidal tendencies.. Seems like we're trading one vice for another here.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I knew that was a health drink. Every time I have it I feel wonderful.
I think the title "Study says Coffee Protect Against Cirrhosis" is misleading.
The title of the actual article is phrased as a question. From the article
we see no conclusions being drawn:
"This is not a recommendation to drink coffee, nor is it a recommendation that the way to deal with heavy alcohol consumption is to drink more coffee," warns Klatsky, who adds that the observational nature of the data may limit its interpretation.
Do the slashdot submitters have some additional data that the researchers did not? I think the only claims we
should make are that there are correlations between coffee (not caffeinated beverage) consumption and liver
life. I didn't see the data but I am not clear from the article if they even compared groups who drank
similar amounts of alchohol each day as coffee drinkers and not coffee drinkers. It could be that coffee
drinkers who drink alchohol tend to drink less and tea drinkers who drink alchohol tend to drink the same.
We all know that decreasing alchohol consumption protects against liver disease.
...the fact that most people who drink 4 cups of coffee a day spend too much time urinating to have a chance to drink alcohol and contribute to cirrhosis in the first place!
That's... a bit of a stretch.
I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to assume that 80% of drinkers follow it up with heavy use of painkillers in general, much less that they follow it up with acetaminophen specifically. Without that assumption, reduced acetaminophen consumption seems rather unlikely to be the reason for an 80% reduction in the rate of cirrhosis among those who drink 4+ cups of coffee per day. It could still be a contributing factor, sure, but the primary reason? I doubt it.
From TFA:
However, those who drank both alcohol and coffee had lower levels than those who drank alcohol but did not drink coffee
WOAH! You mean to tell me that people who drink half a dozen cups of coffee or more a day DON'T drink excessive amounts of alcohol? You mean to tell me that people who drink enough alcohol to pass out every night don't rtend to drink coffee? WHO WOULD'VE THOUGHT!
Really people, have you EVER seen an alcoholic who is a coffee freak? Most people tend to be one or the other. Some hardcore alchys mix, getting high by day and trashed by night, but most alcoholics don't really want the "pick me up" associated with coffee.
Have you ever seen a coffee freak get blitzed? It is a rare event.
Coffee and alcohol are polar opposites. You usually abuse one or the other, but not both. This study's conclusion assumes there is no relationship between alcohol use and coffee use, but that's just ignorant. That's like the RIAA pretending DVDs and video games don't eat into their sales, that pirates are the sole cause of their loss of marketshare. You can only drink so much of anything.
Yeah, this is hardly a scientific rebuttal, but since when did you need science to spot something so blatantly obvious?
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Coffee, with caffeine, can have anti-oxidant effects, can keep you awake and alert, and give you a little rush
but
caffeine can screw up your sleep cycle, is addictive - complete with withdrawl symptoms, can give you arthritis and osteoporosis, stays in your body for a long time, has cumulatative effects.
---
In the US, food containing caffeine has to say it has it, but does not have to say how much. This makes it more difficult to self medicate.
A colleague complained that she needed to stay awake, but didn't want to take too much, for fear of not getting to sleep at night. I computed it down to 2 oz of Coke. I suggested she by a 12 oz, drink 2 oz, and toss the rest. People don't take my advice very often.
-- Stephen.
Boy it must suck to read news like this and realize you spent 10 or 15 years carefully abstaining from all allegedly harmful natural substances, no matter how fun ingesting them might have been, and then read about a study suggesting the stuff might not be very bad for you after all.