NIH Study Finds That Coffee Drinkers Have Lower Risk of Death 234
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."
Re:Already debunked. (Score:4, Insightful)
Risk of Death (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:My prof dranks coffee like water (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I kinda thought risk of death... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, Jesus H. Christ. This comment comes up on every story dealing with mortality risk, and it's getting kind of old. Look, the hazard rate function [wikipedia.org] is not that hard to understand. Educate yourself instead of making the same worn-out joke over and over again, okay?
Re:Statistics, statistics... (Score:4, Insightful)
So your explanation would be that people growing old and sick tend to give up coffee, but keep smoking and drinking alcohol? I guess it's possible, but I it's not obvious to me why that would be.
Key components (Score:4, Insightful)
The study made me think whether some other drink would work as well (or better)? Fruit juice, cocoa, tea, even plain water? What's the secret component(s)?
As the text also notes:
"The mechanism by which coffee protects against risk of death — if indeed the finding reflects a causal relationship — is not clear, because coffee contains more than 1,000 compounds that might potentially affect health," said Freedman.
Coffee is known to be rich in antioxidants, so that could be one sporadic blind guess. But yeah.
Their findings can also be stated as... (Score:3, Insightful)
People who live longer have a higher risk of being coffee drinkers.
Correlation is not causality.