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."

I kinda thought risk of death...

[sokoban]

... was roughly one in one. Guess I was wrong.

Fiber

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just all the extra fiber they get from the coffee. [scientificamerican.com]

Re:Already debunked.

[Anubis IV]

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.

Re:I kinda thought risk of death...

[sycodon]

Alright Sheldon Cooper, we all get it. And you move your bowls at 8:20.

Re:Drink coffee?

[Aryden]

There was an interesting article a year or so ago that showed a correlation between coffee drinking and bowl movements vs water drinking. I will try to find it for citation, but the gist of it was: Due to the diuretic properties of coffee, the coffee drinkers had more regular bowl movements than those who drank water which meant that toxins spent less time in the intestines thus creating a lower likelihood of some intestinal diseases.