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Study Says Coffee Protects Against Cirrhosis
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Tue Jun 13, 2006 06:31 PM
from the irish-coffee-all-around dept.
from the irish-coffee-all-around dept.
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%."
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So glad to hear (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So glad to hear (Score:5, Interesting)
Put a krona (Swedish crown, a coin similar to a US quarter) into a coffee cup. Add coffee until you can't see the krona. Then, add vodka until you can see the krona again.
Parent
Fox coverage (Score:5, Informative)
This report proves coffee is good, and tea is bad
hmm.. perhaps Starbucks is involved somewhere..
Re:Fox coverage (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
How about... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How about... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:How about... (Score:3, Funny)
There's something to be said about "breaking substance dependencies" being modded funny
Then again, those of us that live in glass houses....
Re:How about... (Score:5, Funny)
Let's rephrase that.
Try and take them away, and I'll get my whiskey, smokes and coffee back out of your cold dead hands.
Soko
Parent
Of course (Score:5, Insightful)
What doesn't kill you today only makes you stronger - until they find out that it too can kill you!
Thanks study (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
All I can say is.. (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot Gesserit (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Study with 21 year old data? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Study with 21 year old data? (Score:4, Interesting)
That being said, I also question that it should take that long to conclude on the data collected.
Parent
Re:Study with 21 year old data? (Score:3, Informative)
You do raise a good point, however: How do we know it's not something else that happened in that time? That's why you look at large numbers and correlations between those numbers. That's also why it's not absolute or definite. Coffee is linked to this, but it's not set it stone. More studies and experiments will need to be done to determine what, if anything, caused this condition.
Re:Study with 21 year old data? (Score:5, Interesting)
As is pointed out in the study, they don't know that caffeine is the cause. Coffee is loaded with all kinds of bioactive chemicals and it could be any of them. It could even be the cream or sugar people sometimes put in coffee. So the fact is, they have no idea why this is the case. What they'll probably need to do is kill a few hundred mice and rats with booze and coffee to figure out why and how it works.
As for the age of the data, it isn't really that old. It takes time to develop alcoholic cirrhosis and they're basically using historical data to determine who got it and who didn't and based on a questionnaire they filled out at the time of their enrollment in the health care plan, they were able to determine their coffee and alcohol habits. That said, a lot of alcoholics don't admit how much they drink on those kinds of things, so I'm not entirely sure how they can measure the accuracy. Alcoholics usually admit their drinking habits after the evidence is so obvious they can't hide it (like after they've developed alcoholic cirrhosis).
Parent
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Cirrhosis specifics (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/cirrhosis/DS00373 [mayoclinic.com] h osis [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_liver_cirr
The Joys of Coffee (Score:4, Interesting)
Further proof... (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Wait 10 days.... (Score:3, Funny)
Good Good! GOOD!!! (Score:4, Funny)
No negative effects@!!!!
NONE NONE!!!!
Caffine GOOD!!!!
Merely correlation? (Score:4, Insightful)
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! (Score:5, Funny)
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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Re:for alcoholics (Score:5, Funny)
Signed,
- An Alcoholic
Parent