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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
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.
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?
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
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
Caffine GOOD!
No negative effects@!!!!
NONE NONE!!!!
Caffine GOOD!!!!
Oh! Thank you, kind citizen! I was not aware that alcohol could hurt me, until your insightful comment! How can I ever repay you? You are a true humanitarian, and your wisdom knows no bounds! You have re-affirmed my faith in humanity!
Signed,
- An Alcoholic
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
Well, this explains why Grampa isn't dead yet. We were wondering...
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.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
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! --
Lyndsey Nagle: Do I detect a note of sarcasm?
Frink: (With sarcasm detector) Are you kidding? This baby is off
the charts mm-hai.
CBG: A sarcasm detector, that's a real useful invention.
(Sarcasm detector explodes)
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."
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
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.