Caffeine Prevents Liver Disease

DC Jeff writes "The Washington Post reports that drinking two cups of coffee or tea daily may reduce the risk of liver disease. From the article: 'The study of nearly 10,000 people showed that those who drank more than two cups of coffee or tea per day developed chronic liver disease at half the rate of those who drank less than one cup each day.'"

I always say...

[DustyShadow]

Everything in moderation, even moderation.

There is no "trick" to living longer, just use commmon sense.

Re:Sod That!

[CheshireCatCO]

"You could be trading your teeth for a healthier liver, right?"

And, hey, teeth are relatively easy to replace. No organ donor is even required.

Re:Nope

[CheshireCatCO]

Wait... *suicide* is an illness now?

The trick is...

[NotQuiteReal]

The trick to longevity has a lot to do with picking the right parents!

Re:There's the rub

[ZiakII]

The study shows protection for people who drink too much, are overweight or have hemochromatosis (too much iron). Basically, anyone at a high risk of liver disease. Otherwise it doesn't seem to do much of anything.

So basically 80% of /.?

Re:O Rly?

[ATeamMrT]

How many people in the study were killed off by high blood pressure before they had the chance to develop cancer?

Good question!

It seems that any industry can produce a study which says their product is healthy/benificial in some way. But they never tell you the adverse health effects. I would not be supprised if the tobacco industry would run a news story saying smoking decreased colon cancer by .0001% in the population. Too bad it would kill 100X as many from lung cancer.

This reminds me of the 80's when everyone was saying how bad butter is, and to switch to margarine or die of a heart attack. 10 years later, researchers said margarine is unhealthy and butter is better. I remember the same debate about eggs, until some researcher enlightened us to good cholesterol. LOL, I guess it took someone to fly to France to watch 80 year old men eat eggs fried in butter before they asked "What's going on here".

I am going to take my grandmothers advice, she is still alive in her 90's. She told me when I was young to get 8 good hours of sleep each night. Don't stay up past midnight, wake up early and ready for the new day. And everything is good in moderation, never take too much of anything. The only thing she said to avoid was smoke and drugs, and people who smoke or use drugs. The last bit of advice was that tomorrow is always a new day, no setback should foul your mood. It is pretty simple advice, but I think she was 100% correct.

Re:Sod That!

[TubeSteak]

This should bode well for the market of caffeinated beer.

Sentance #1 from TFA: Coffee and tea may reduce the risk of serious liver damage in people who drink too much alcohol, are overweight or have too much iron in the blood, researchers reported yesterday.

Anyways, I'm not sure caffeinated beer is a good idea. Generally speaking, unless you're really partying hard, your motor skills and level of consciousness decline as your BAC goes up... preventing alcohol poisoning. If you throw a stimulant into the mix, it might keep you drinking well past the point where you should be on the floor & passed out.

Repeat after me

[Quiet_Desperation]

"Correlation does not prove causation"

Repeat as necessary.

Incidence

[henryhbk]

The key to these studies, which we teach all the residents and medical students, is that you have to look at the incidence of liver disease (especially when they specifically excluded viral hepatitis which is the overwhelming majority) in the population. If the incidence is one in 100,000 and you get a 50% reduction (sounds impressive) you only change it to 1 in 200,000. This is why pharmaceutical firms use the relative risk (ignoring incidence, just using the percentage) in advertising.

The incidence of liver disease among non-hepatitis infected people is incredibly small. If you take all comers it is 12th among cause of death (lower than suicde) according to the NIH (pdf of causes of death) [cdc.gov].

Because even if the result is statistically significant, if not that many people die of it (~2500 in 2003), then the harm caused by this drug (caffine) may not outway the rare case it saves (and yes, I understand if you're the one it is significant, but this is public health)

For instance "Zipia reduces aliens ripping out of your abdomen by 99%" sounds very impressive, until you look at how many people this would affect (there were the 4 alien movies plus spaceballs). So everyone should not start using zipia, which undoubtably will cause some bad side effect, versus those few actors who would be saved.

Re:Sod That!

[ackthpt]

If you throw a stimulant into the mix, it might keep you drinking well past the point where you should be on the floor & passed out.

I honestly believe piling the blood with a plethrora of substances doesn't eventually do a body good. I've been utterly strung out on so much caffeine, from the days I worked 16-18 hour days for months straight, I slept fitfully and effectively went through detox every weekend, before starting again on Monday. I went through a pound of coffee a week at that time. I certainly didn't feel any better for it.

Mostly I limit my pints and if I'm wobbly afoot, I sit down and drink water until I feel clearer of head. Also helps reduce the chance and serverity of hangovers.

Re:Sod That!

[ender-]

Sentance #1 from TFA: Coffee and tea may reduce the risk of serious liver damage in people who drink too much alcohol,

Of course, they could just stop drinking so much alcohol...

Re:Great News!

[Spy der Mann]

But in that article they dismissed sexual intercourse for the probability of getting an STD - this means that a monogamous relationship is just as effective.

Perhaps this study could've been labelled: "Having monogamous relationship and no sex prior to marriage decreases men's probabilities of having prostate cancer". But well, the same could be said about AIDS. But something tells me that this idea will be rejected by the public right away.

Re:Repeat after me

[DoofusOfDeath]

NO evidence can *prove* causation.

Unless you've shown that for all (and I mean *all*) distinct states of a system, some event B happens only after some other event A. And even then, you run into some hard realities about the tenuous definition of "causality".

Re:Repeat after me

[CosmeticLobotamy]

"Correlation does not prove causation"

I'm really glad people doing actual science don't do things like see penicillin reducing the numbers of bacteria and say, "Yeah, but correlation does not prove causation. I'm going to go ahead and bleed you some more."

$medical_group study this week shows that...

[Ponga]

Who the hell listens to these 'studies' anyway!?

Re:Repeat after me

[espressojim]

What those scientists did is try to think of all the other reasons that the number of bacteria might also be decreasing. Then, test all those other hypothesis. When all those alternates don't pan out, and this one does (penicillin vs. non penicillin results in an effect of X reduction of bacteria over N number of tests with a confidence of W) then you can believe your hypothesis.

I take it very few people on Slashdot DO science for a living. I have a paper in nature genetics this month (well, on line, it'll be in print in january), does that count as 'doing science'?

Re:Repeat after me

[Quiet_Desperation]

So you support the title "Caffiene *PREVENTS* liver disease"?

Cripes, I never said do no further research. That's called a "straw man fallacy". I was addressing the common tendency of the media to present correlation as causation. A simple correlation should not even be news outside journals for the field in question.

This link might help. [wikipedia.org]

Re:Sod That!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, since nobody has posted already about this, when working in the dot com boom I also would party very hard. Of an evening up to a liter of vodka, and many many uppers (read proper uppers not caffeine). I could stay up for days at a time, down side was I had week long hangovers with special consequences. These were like I couldn't physically move for being ill, not even to change position in bed.

These days I have maybe a cup of coffee in a day if I really want to and maybe some wine in the evening, and now I can think clearer.

Re:Sod That!

[AKAImBatman]

WHOA, WHOA, WHOA. Slow down people! Everyone's automatically assuming that caffine is the key ingredient here. Yet no one has yet made the connection that both Coffee and Black Tea also contain copious quantities of Tannic Acid [wikipedia.org]. Soda pops such as Coca Cola, Pepsi, and RC also share this characteristic. For all we know, they could do a study next week that finds drinking 32oz of Cola per day has the same "health" effect.

From the sound of this article, this was probably a preliminary study. i.e. They surveyed 10,000 people to get their responses, established that some effect was beating the statistical odds, then published their results. From here they will try to get funding to do more thorough studies, and potentially isolate the exact compound responsible for the statistical difference.

Re:Great News!

[StikyPad]

Except that one's own fidelity is never insurance of one's partner's fidelity. Especially when you consider that 10% of children (on average across social, economic, and political borders) are the product of cuckoldry.. So at least 10% of women are unfaithful, and that's just the ones who actually get knocked up. Further consider that you're more likely to use barrier protection (a rubber) when having casual sex than when you're in a monogomous relationship. And finally, that women are much less likely to even know that they have an STD (particularly herpes), since, in addition to the possibility of a symptomless infection, symptoms which do present may not be visible.

Incidentally, this isn't a malign against women, but society already knows men are dogs. Most men, on the other hand, tend to assume the best about women, particularly attractive women, and especially women with whom they may have a relationship. Not that there's any other way to have a successful relationship; just be aware that risks aren't always what they seem.