SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
A Cup of Joe and You're Good to Go (Under 6 a Day and You're A-OK):
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 per cent.
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 Hyppönen 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.
[...] "In order to maintain a healthy heart and a healthy blood pressure, people must limit their coffees to fewer than six cups a day – based on our data six was the tipping point where caffeine started to negatively affect cardiovascular risk."
Using UK Biobank data of 347,077 participants aged 37-73 years, the study explored the ability of the caffeine-metabolizing gene (CYP1A2) to better process caffeine, identifying increased risks of cardiovascular disease in line with coffee consumption and genetic variations.
Prof Hyppönen says that despite carriers of the fast-processing gene variation being four times quicker at metabolising caffeine, the research does not support the belief that these people could safely consume more caffeine, more frequently, without detrimental health effects.
Journal Reference:
Ang Zhou, Elina Hyppönen. Long-term coffee consumption, caffeine metabolism genetics, and risk of cardiovascular disease: a prospective analysis of up to 347,077 individuals and 8368 cases. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2019; 109 (3): 509 DOI: 10.1093/ajcn/nqy297
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday May 14 2019, @03:18AM (4 children)
Let's be honest here: yes, I like coffee (or at least good coffee), but I've never been addicted to it, rarely have a cup more than a couple times per week, and almost never use it as a stimulant (except in emergencies).
Everyone can debate the value of good coffee and its health benefits or detriments, but let's be clear that it's a drug addiction if you're drinking it every day. And it has the same effects as most drug addictions -- your body experiences dependency with reduced benefits of the drug as time goes on.
I remember reading a couple studies from about a decade ago measuring cognitive performance tasks from people who were addicted to caffeine and those who weren't. (I don't recall how they did control groups, but at least one of the studies seemed good to me at the time... I could dig it up again, I suppose.)
Anyhow, the main finding is that those who are addicted to caffeine do poorly on cognitive tasks with no coffee. No surprise. But even when they had their coffee, they'd barely make it up to the performance level of those who don't consume caffeine regularly, even when the latter had no stimulants. So, coffee addicts need their "hit" just to get back to the baseline of normal folks. Meanwhile non-addicts can actually get a stimulant boost occasionally if they use it once in a while and avoid addiction.
None of this is meant to criticize anyone who loves coffee. But I chuckle a bit whenever I see folks in the morning complaining about how they don't have their coffee yet and thus can't function well. Meanwhile, I may have an occasional groggy morning if I don't sleep well, but I almost never experience that feeling of an addict that needs a hit just to wake up properly.
(And yes, I do know what it feels like somewhat -- I went through phases when I'd hang out with coffee drinkers and would go for a week or more having coffee every morning, and I'd start to feel awful, and then got withdrawal headaches when I stopped... So I generally avoid ever having more than a couple days in a row, even though I like the taste of coffee. Addiction just isn't worth it.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @04:02AM
Yes, this is exactly what coffee does. These people do not even remember what it is like to not be an addict anymore. Usually they are also addicted to sugar as well. The three addictions that funded the transatlantic slave trade were tobacco, sugar, and coffee. We have only attacked one of the triumvirate so far but the others are going down.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday May 14 2019, @08:53AM (1 child)
Not for me.
Nowadays, I'm drinking a double-shot espresso** every morning, just to have something while waiting for the train.
Some 10 years back, I used to drink 5 times more than today when pulling long hours. Never had any trouble going back to none at all once the load was over and I could relax.
On the flip side, I gave up trying to quit smoking.
**
That's about 4 teaspoons of coffee percolated into about 30 grams of water, no sugar - barely a mouthful. Lasts me for 10 minutes (=2 cigarettes) worth of sipping time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Tuesday May 14 2019, @03:04PM
Don't give up, dude. It can be done.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @04:01PM
Caffeine also seems to have significant impact on spiders. [wikipedia.org] Careful with that shit. This is what your brain on caffeine looks like!