Drinking Six or More Coffees a Day Can Be Detrimental To Your Health, New Study Reveals (unisa.edu.au) 147
While the pros and cons of drinking coffee have been debated for decades, new research from the University of South Australia reveals that drinking six or more coffees a day can be detrimental to your health, increasing your risk of heart disease by up to 22 percent. From a report: In Australia, one in six people are affected by cardiovascular disease. It is a major cause of death with one person dying from the disease every 12 minutes. According to the World Health Organization, cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death, yet one of the most preventable. Investigating the association of long-term coffee consumption and cardiovascular disease, UniSA researchers Dr Ang Zhou and Professor Elina Hypponen of the Australian Centre for Precision Health say their research confirms the point at which excess caffeine can cause high blood pressure, a precursor to heart disease.
This is the first time an upper limit has been placed on safe coffee consumption and cardiovascular health. "Coffee is the most commonly consumed stimulant in the world -- it wakes us up, boosts our energy and helps us focus -- but people are always asking 'How much caffeine is too much?'," Prof Hypponen says. "Most people would agree that if you drink a lot of coffee, you might feel jittery, irritable or perhaps even nauseous -- that's because caffeine helps your body work faster and harder, but it is also likely to suggest that you may have reached your limit for the time being.
This is the first time an upper limit has been placed on safe coffee consumption and cardiovascular health. "Coffee is the most commonly consumed stimulant in the world -- it wakes us up, boosts our energy and helps us focus -- but people are always asking 'How much caffeine is too much?'," Prof Hypponen says. "Most people would agree that if you drink a lot of coffee, you might feel jittery, irritable or perhaps even nauseous -- that's because caffeine helps your body work faster and harder, but it is also likely to suggest that you may have reached your limit for the time being.
Correlation is not causation (Score:5, Interesting)
It is well known that too little sleep increases your risk of heart disease. I can well imagine that heavy coffee drinkers, on average, get too little sleep. Quite likely, that is what the research is really showing.
Re:Correlation is not causation (Score:5, Insightful)
That's exactly what I was thinking. How did they control for sleep?
That said, I'm not sure they needed to. The actual abstract [oup.com] doesn't suggest that this was even their goal. If I read that correctly, the goal was to test whether a particular gene variation that causes people to metabolize caffeine more poorly has an effect on the increased cardiovascular risk associated with high-dose caffeine intake. They found that it did not have any impact.
Studying that doesn't require controlling for sleep, because it isn't likely to differ significantly between the people in the study who have that gene and the people who don't. So I'd imagine that didn't even come up.
Of course, we can't really have any meaningful discussion on the article as a whole, because we can't actually read the article unless we want to pay forty-five bucks for access to the closed-access journal it was published in, so I'm just going to assume that there are no interesting conclusions beyond what's covered in the abstract, and we'll call it a day.
Re:Correlation is not causation (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, we can't really have any meaningful discussion on the article as a whole, because we can't actually read the article unless we want to pay forty-five bucks for access to the closed-access journal it was published in, so I'm just going to assume that there are no interesting conclusions beyond what's covered in the abstract, and we'll call it a day.
Aaar matey.....
https://sci-hub.tw/10.1093/ajc... [sci-hub.tw]
Re: Correlation is not causation (Score:1)
Not to mention, all the source data was based on about 8000 patients in the UK that self-reported their coffee intake. No mention of how much caffeine per cup, or size of the cup.
What I find most suspicious is that the native (Angle, Saxon, Welsh, Celt) population of the UK does not consume much coffee at all, but they do consume a large amount of tea. Yet, the peer-reviewed "academic" journal failed to mention that.
So... did the researchers extrapolate based on tea, or did it perhaps center around a narr
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
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Depends on the person. I drink coffee just before bed and it *helps* me sleep.
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Me too.
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Not necessarily. I've had ten hours sleep for each of the past four nights and at least 8 cups of coffee each of those days.
I mean, it's 10am and I'm thinking it's been too long since my fourth cup of coffee this morning.
Re:Correlation is not causation (Score:5, Informative)
Quite likely, that is what the research is really showing.
Reading the actual paper, it is clear this is a correlation, not a causation, study, regarding caffeine intake and not "coffee". They link the intake of caffeine to high blood pressure and then to CVD, so it isn't even a direct link.
I drink lots of caffeine every day. I have no problem either sleeping or with high blood pressure. This article is just another justification for money spent doing a scientific study -- calamity can be prevented if you change how you live, says PhD.
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The abstract (I haven't read the paper) speaks of "cups of coffee" which is a measure I never understand. Is a single espresso shot
Read more than the abstract next time. They explain the questionS. They even differentiated between cups of "coffee" and cups of decaf.
They are explicitly examining the proposition of "increased risk of myocardial infarction and hypertension ... for individuals who carry a functional variant at cytochrome P450 1A2 (CYP1A2)"
Actually, they looked for a decreased risk in those who have the "fast caffeine processing" variant.
Don't take it so personally, they're not interested in you.
I didn't say they were. Go insult someone else.
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It's worse than that. The research is showing a correlation between caffeine intake and high blood pressure (likely causal), and another correlation between high blood pressure and heart disease.
High blood pressure from caffeine consumption is temporary, resulting from an increased heart rate caused by the stimulant drug. In people with heart disease, the increased stress on their heart may push them over the edge, so limiting caffeine intake is probably a good idea if you already have heart disease.
Hi
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I can well imagine that heavy coffee drinkers, on average, get too little sleep.
I can't. Most people who are truly heavy coffee drinkers are the ones where caffeine has long stopped having any impact on their sleep cycle.
I drink about 10 cups a day, including usually a double espresso very close to bed. I'm completely addicted to caffeine to the point where if I don't drink my morning coffee than by 1pm I will have a splitting headache. But otherwise it has no effect on me, especially not for helping keep me awake.
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Maybe not a 'toxin' which has the effect of increasing heart rate, and constricting blood vessels. I'd say they are exactly 100% the people who shouldn't be drinking large amounts of such a substance.
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Six cups | 2 Pots of coffee is the average amount that I imbibe daily, along with dinner most days; lunch once or twice a week, and breakfast once or twice a week. I also tend to fast one day a week (coffee only). At most I'll eat twice a day.
Side effects I notice: am cranky until my first or second cup of coffee in the morning; urinate probably twice as much as most folks and defecate less than half as much.
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How do you like the intermittent fasting? Is it difficult for you? Does it get better? I'm tempted to give it a try, but it sounds really hard.
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Hunger is a funny thing, as it is sporadic. So you can without even thinking about it, just preoccupy yourself with something else and the feeling of hunger will pass. It's also common for many folks to misinterpret being thirsty for hunger.
I would also say most days when I eat dinner, it's out of necessity of knowing I need to eat something as opposed to any overwhelming sense of hunger.
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How do you like the intermittent fasting? Is it difficult for you? Does it get better?
Yes, it gets better. I find that most hunger is simply related to habitual eating. I got into it by delaying breakfast a little bit every day. You can take it as slow as you want.
For longer fasts (more than 24 hours), it's easier if you first switch to a low carb diet, so that your body is already used to running mostly on fat.
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I'm already there. I'm considering starting out with some 16-18 hour fasts, so I stop eating at 6pm and don't eat again until noon the next day. Something like that. Thanks for your reply, friend.
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I always loved breakfast foods the most so I was wary of trying it, but you can eat breakfast anytime you want. I have it for dinner sometimes. I like how I feel towards the end of a 20 hour fast and am considering pushing for >24 hours. I am wary of this since I have trouble sleeping while hungry, but maybe it will be easier than expected. Skipping breakfast was way easier than
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Good thing I don't post that often then.
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I used to drink a lot of coffee... Maybe that much, depending on how big your cups are.
I just naturally stopped for a bit, got a tiny bit of withdrawal at first and then started feeling much better. Was not relying on that kick any more. It just kind of evened everything out and I didn't get as many headaches. The best was not getting the crash when I was temporarily unable to access coffee.
I realized that I was drinking a lot of bad coffee just to keep caffeine levels up. Like an addict.
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If you're not a fat bastard and you get a little bit of exercise, I'll bet you can drink a pot of coffee per day and not have negative effects.
I'm thinking that this is a false flag campaign by the Big Booze Industrial Complex.
They want us to drink booze for breakfast instead of coffee.
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Coffe or caffeine ? (Score:5, Insightful)
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After they consume it, then they realize.
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How many whats? (Score:2)
six or more coffees a day
How much is "a coffee"? I have two 16 oz cups per day. So, I'm 4 coffees short of danger?
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You should probably cut back a bit.
Why? The study only found a correlation above 6 cups (3 mugs) a day.
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100-120mg is a useful approximation of a reasonably strong cup of coffee.
Added caffeine in beverages is limited to 80mg/8 fl oz. in the US. Virtually every "energy drink" contains this amount.
https://cspinet.org/eating-hea... [cspinet.org]
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WTF? A cup of coffee is about 30 oz and is made with about a tenth of a pound of coffee beans in a large french press.
More than six might be unhealthy, I'll grant that.
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Well,
real coffee is made like this:
you pour about half a pound of grinded coffee into a flat can on the fire.
Carefully dampen it with water.
When steam shows up put in a horse show.
If the horse show sinks: the coffee is to weak.
I hope that helped ...
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What is a horse show?
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When using an electric coffeemaker a "cup" is approximately 5 fluid ounces.
Having not RTFA I don't know if they specified the volume of coffee they were writing about but your 32 ounces is, in coffeemaker lingo, a bit more than 6 "cups" of coffee.
How much is "a coffee"? (Score:5, Informative)
There's strong coffee, weak coffee, large cups, small cups. Instead of coming up with a meaningless measure, why not just tell us how many milligrams of caffeine it's safe to consume?
According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], "For the general population of healthy adults, Health Canada advises a daily intake of no more than 400 mg." It also tells us, "A cup of coffee contains 80–175 mg of caffeine, depending on what 'bean' (seed) is used and how it is prepared."
So, depending on the type of bean, three cups could be too many, and this advice of "six or more coffees" is terrible.
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They tried doing just that in the experiment, but the rats all wanted to customize their Starbucks order.
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why not just tell us how many milligrams of caffeine it's safe to consume?
Did they prove that caffeine is the variable? 6 cups of anything with "four sugars" is already known to contribute to heart disease.
Flawed study (Score:2)
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I can think of plenty of other flaws in the study, but can’t access the full text to see how well designed the study is.
First they came for the beer... (Score:4, Funny)
... but I did not say anything, because I'm not a beer drinker.
Then they came for the coffee, but I did not say anything, because I'm not a coffee drinker.
Then they came for me, because I flash people on the public bus, but little did they know that being arrested by burly police officers had long been my erotic fantasy, and so I also came for them.
CAPTCHA: recoil
No Doy (Score:2)
Excessive amounts of stimulants are bad for you!? Who knew!?
There's no such thing as free energy folks.
GOT it (Score:3)
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She's a Targaryen. They're not exactly known for their level-headedness.
Know what else is detrimental to your health? (Score:1)
Keeping me from drinking my six cups of coffee.
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Sounds like one of those things urbandictionary invents.
Sure, whatever... (Score:2)
Last year they said drinking 12 cups of coffee a day makes you immortal... like I'm going to believe this now! I still have 8 cups to go today...
I don't know about that. (Score:2)
A few years ago I worked with a woman who drank 2-3 *pots* (standard 12-cup Bunn decanters [bunn.com]) of coffee during the workday.
She seemed fine.
Bogus research (Score:1)
Unfortunately it is a well know fact that people with heart disease feel like drinking more coffee than normal people. How did they conduct their research? Obviously by monitoring heart condition and asking subjects how much coffee they drink each day.
When will we see and end to this fake research which cannot, and does not, discern the difference between cause and effect?
How big is "a coffee" ? (Score:2)
Or perhaps this means six different kinds of coffee, just as "two waters" might mean New York City tap water (the first) and Newark New Jersey tap water (the other).
Or we could try using mass nouns like "water," "software," and "hardware" correctly. You don't drink two waters [unless, see above] and you don't have two "softwares." *sigh*
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I used to walk down to the radio shack and get a pound of software every sunday, for poppop to enjoy by the fire.
Thank god I only drink espresso (Score:2, Funny)
Only four double shots of espresso a day, I should be fine.
Anything in excess is detrimental to your health.. (Score:1)
even water.
Reading 6 or More /. clickbaits (Score:2)
Reading 6 or More /. clickbaits can be detrimental to your self respect.
People who advocate decaf coffee, sugar free snacks and drinks, safe sex? Fuck'em with a coca cola freeze pop that you used before.
Study design INCAPABLE of showing what is claimed (Score:5, Informative)
A prospective study such as this one is INCAPABLE of showing what the article headline claimed.
What it showed is an association or correlation between coffee consumption and cardio-vascular disease (CVD). But in order to show what is claimed (that coffee consumption increases risk of CVD), it would be necessary to do a controlled study where participants are randomized into two groups, and one group is given coffee while the other is not. Otherwise there could be many explanations for the correlation.
Furthermore, risk of CVD is the wrong thing to look at in the first place. They should be looking at all-cause mortality, because, for all we know, coffee consumption could reduce risk of stroke or cancer, counteracting the increased risk (if any) of CVD.
I have been watching studies on coffee and caffeine for decades now, and there has never been a study able to link coffee consumption to any increase in mortality. The only thing we know for sure is that it can disrupt sleep, and that quitting can cause withdrawal symptoms. The results in this study are definitely not convincing enough to change the status quo, in my opinion.
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Frisbees are round. The world is an oblate spheroid. My kid has been vaccinated. I don't know how old you are, but I have seen supposedly settled science flip mroe than once now in some areas (especially health and nutrition). So I take everything with a grain of salt.
About two weeks (Score:2)
About two weeks till the average nutritionist realizes that THIS month coffee is actually good for you - next month will be different, this being coffee and nutritionists.
Given current paradigm is it's GOOD for you ... (Score:2)
Drinking Six or More Coffees a Day Can Be Detrimental To Your Health, New Study Reveals
I find that surprising, given that the current paradigm among the cardiovascular community is that coffee is good for you: ..inverse associations were observed for deaths due to heart disease, cancer, respi
- Large meta-analysis studies initially showed that 3 to 5 coffees per day substantially increased lifespan (not decreased, as had once been thought.
- Later studies confirmed and expanded it.
- ".
Not just the US either. (Score:2)
Also: It's not just the US. I think this started in Britain or the E.U. A recent confirming study was from Italy.
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Well,
the main differences between the US and Italy or France (or the EU) are:
* here we have real coffee
* no one cares about studies
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Well your export chains like McDonalds, Starbucks or CoffeeFellows don't ... so I assumed you have none :D
But if you have perhaps you can provide a link.
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I find that surprising, given that the current paradigm among the cardiovascular community is that coffee is good for you:
The problem is that if you don't like the "current paradigm" just wait. The pendulum just oscillates back and forth.
The only real takeaway from the paper is: of all of the studies, this is one of them.
Convergent series. (Score:2)
The problem is that if you don't like the "current paradigm" just wait. The pendulum just oscillates back and forth.
The nice thing about the scientific method is that (when it hasn't been too corrupted) such oscillations are damped. Paradigms may change, but they tend to be a convergent series, not an ongoing alternation.
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Sadly, I don't see any dampening in this area. Too many companies have a vested interest in driving the position of the pendulum in one direction or another.
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urk (Score:2)
OK, so it's not the coffee, it's the caffeine?
You do realize that not all coffee that people drink has caffeine, right?
Gar, but that bugs me. Same with stories about studies showing that "X sodas per day causes Y." OK, how? Citric acid? Carbonic acid? Caffeine? You do realize that all sodas aren't the same, right?
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Even caffeinated coffee deviates substantially in its levels of caffeine.
Last time I had an engineer here to fix my boiler he asked for strong coffee. I gave him what I normally drink myself and it was too strong for him.
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You do realize that not all coffee that people drink has caffeine, right?
That's why the study identified drinkers of decaf vs. regular. Yes, I think they realize that not all coffee has caffeine.
Re: urk (Score:2)
Gee wizz, thanks a bunch! ... WTF, Seriously!? (Score:2)
They needed a study to come up with this conclusion? Guess that was CORI - Captain Obvious Research Institute once again.
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Screw You! (Score:2)
Die! Die you dirty sons of bitches! MORE COFFEE!
What size coffee? How much caffeine? (Score:2)
Is this 6 espressos, or 6 "venti" extra shot Americanos? Or a standard cup measure of 250ml, so 1.5 litres of coffee. And how strong? How many spoons of instant coffee is this? What if I don't drink coffee, I only drink Red Bull or Monster?
Saying just "6 cups of coffee" doesn't tell me enough about how much caffeine they are saying is problematic. It doesn't appear to be mentioned anywhere. Even just an addition "6 cups of coffee, or xxx mg of caffeine, ..." would suffice.
In an attempt to answer my ow
Quote (Score:1)
I read a quote today on social media
"Give me Coffee to change the things I can.. And Wine to accept those that I cannot"