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NIH Study Finds That Coffee Drinkers Have Lower Risk of Death
parallel_prankster writes "Older adults who drank coffee — caffeinated or decaffeinated — had a lower risk of death [full paper is paywalled, at the New England Journal of Medicine] overall than others who did not drink coffee, according to a study by researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, and AARP. Coffee drinkers were less likely to die from heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, injuries and accidents, diabetes, and infections, although the association was not seen for cancer. These results from a large study of older adults were observed after adjustment for the effects of other risk factors on mortality, such as smoking and alcohol consumption. They also found that the association between coffee and reduction in risk of death increased with the amount of coffee consumed. Relative to men and women who did not drink coffee, those who consumed three or more cups of coffee per day had approximately a 10 percent lower risk of death. Researchers caution, however, that they can't be sure whether these associations mean that drinking coffee actually makes people live longer."
... was roughly one in one. Guess I was wrong.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
The risk of death must be lower than the risk of taxes, though, because I pay taxes every year and I haven't died even once.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
A statement is released saying that coffee is known in the State of California to cause cancer
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
This is probably because people with bad hearts, etc., do not drink coffee, hence only people who are healthier drink coffee when they are old. Isn't it amazing that they would have a reduced death rate. Imagine what the relative death rate would be for old people who skydive, compared to those who don't?
I can't see how this is "good" for you and reduces risk of death.
And yet, the data says it is. This is why we do science, because not everything is obvious, and sometimes tests come back with unexpected results. That's how we learn things.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Even though a larger proportion of coffee drinkers may engage in those activities (I'm not saying they do, but let's grant it, for the sake of argument), if you control for the different variables, you can still draw correlations out of the data. For instance, a coffee drinker who also smokes may, on average, live longer than someone who smokes but doesn't drink coffee as well. Likewise for red meat, less exercise, etc.. They're not suggesting that coffee drinking cancels out the effects of all those other things. They're merely suggesting it may provide some benefits over similar people not drinking coffee.
You've alleged that their controls are terrible. Please elaborate on how, exactly, since they explicitly mentioned controlling for smoking in the article, which was one of your points.
My guess is that people who don't drink coffee more likely DO drink sugary sodas.