Slashdot Mirror
Excess Coffee May Be Linked To Early Death
Mr.Intel writes "Should we believe it? Those of us under 55 who drink a lot of coffee – more than four cups per day – may be at greater risk of an early death. And not just death from heart problems, but death from all causes. The study, published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings (abstract), followed people for almost two decades, and found that in both sexes, younger people were more likely to die of anything than people who drank less."
Must be spinning in his grave ... oh wait...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Good thing they invented Redbull
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
if you are the kind of person who drinks that much coffee...
anyway it's not clear that coffee is the problem
Why would you even want that?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Possible correlation to people who drink a lot of coffee and people who work crazy hours/lots of stress/not much sleep/eat poorly/etc..
My excessive coffee drinking is a symptom of my shitty lifestyle.
Death from all causes is the leading causes of death for people under 55.
...and doubt I ever have drunk 53 cups of coffee as I am English, and TEA is the way. So bring on 55 - (forget the fags I smoke and Beer I drink ;) )
Sometimes they say coffee is beneficial and helpful.
Or even sometimes they say it actually lowers the risk of death.
Other times they say it's horrible and should be avoided.
Can you please make up your minds already? |:
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Every good junk scientist knows that correlation always equals causality. I am a member of the junk scientists world club. We meet every year. Everyone flys to the west to get to our meeting so that no one will end up flying off the end of the earth. Correlation equals causality is thesis of every speach. So it can't be that people addicted to coffee might be more likely to be addicted to something else as well. If coffee is correlated to death then coffee must cause death!
"However, after stratification based on age, younger (28 cups per week) and all-cause mortality after adjusting for potential confounders and fitness level (HR, 1.56; 95% CI, 1.30-1.87 for men; and HR, 2.13; 95% CI, 1.26-3.59 for women)."
I believe the standard next step is to assert that they couldn't have possibly checked for all possible correlated variables, and hence all studies are meaningless. If you're into that sort of thing.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Huh. You know how you can take your social security earlier in exchange for a smaller monthly payout? Take a good look at that.
Those who don't drink coffee are more likely to die in their sleep.
More music, fewer hits
Possible correlation to people who drink a lot of coffee and people who work crazy hours/lots of stress/not much sleep/eat poorly/etc..
My excessive coffee drinking is a symptom of my shitty lifestyle.
There probably is a strong correlation between younger people who drink a lot of coffee and have an unhealthy lifestyle. Supposedly the researcher corrected for smoking but not for things like too little sleep, too much stress, etc. (Been there. Done that.) If that describes you and you survive into your 50s, chances are that your lifestyle gets healthier but you still have the coffee habit and then the health benefits of coffee consumption kick in. (There now. Doing that.)
I'm down to only about 5 mugs a day which is better than when I was an undergrad (mid 1970s) and drinking 10 to 15 mugs a day.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
That is a good question. In the US, most coffemakers are graduated such that a cup is 6 US ounces (an official cup being 8 ounces). I drink 2 good-sized mugs of coffee every morning, which is about 4 coffeemaker cups, so about 3 official cups.
But I am over 55, so I have nothing to worry about. :-)
As soon as I read the headline, I was reminded of an earlier slashdot article from last year.
In the linked NIH study, drinking 3 or more cups of coffee a day was associated with a lower risk of death. From all causes. This study is probably a follow up to the earlier study, and they came to the opposite conclusion.
Conclusion: not enough studies to change your daily habits one way or another. Obligatory xkcd
Bad for those under 55 years old, huh?
So, you're saying I only have to survive 4 more years until it starts being good for me?
Coffee drinkers studied by Mayo Clinic scientists have a greater chance of dying than NIH coffee drinkers.
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
"If a and b or correlated"
*facepalm* Someone slap me, I must need more coffee!
Free Martian Whores!
It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is drinking more than four cups of coffee per day.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD coffee consumption has risen yet again, now over more than 4 cups a day. Coming close on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has drunk more coffee, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is drinking pots of coffee every day.
You don't need to be a Juan Valdez to predict *BSD's future. The kettle is on the stove: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is drinking too much coffee. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to drink coffee. Coffee flows like a river of coffee.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having drunk more than a pot a day for years. The unwashed cups on the desks of long time FreeBSD developers only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is drinking coffee.
Fact: *BSD drinks excessive amounts of coffee.
John
Maybe you didn't realize it; but you've given us a rather succinct re-telling of the Mexican fisherman story
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The possibilities:
Coffee causes early death (doubtful)
Early death causes coffee (impossible)
Something else causes both (most likely)
Coincidence (possible but unlikely)
OR
Author of study has some terrible disease that means he can't drink coffee and has it in for the rest of us coffee drinkers (obvious answer).