The study, conducted at the University of Oulu, analysed data from 2,264 participants aged 46 in the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966. Researchers examined how habitual coffee consumption was associated with circulating metabolites, cardiometabolic risk markers and sex hormones.
Despite having a similar body mass index (BMI), individuals with higher coffee consumption had lower total and visceral fat and greater skeletal muscle mass than those who consumed less coffee.
In both men and women, higher coffee consumption was correlated with lower circulating levels of branched-chain amino acids, biomarkers that have previously been linked to insulin resistance and an increased risk of type 2 diabetes when chronically elevated.
The strongest sex-specific associations were observed in men. Higher coffee consumption was linked to a more favourable glucose–insulin profile, higher concentrations of total and bioavailable testosterone, and increased levels of sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG). At the same time, free testosterone and the free androgen index were modestly lower. In women, hormonal associations were more limited and were primarily characterised by higher SHBG and lower measures of free androgens.
"Coffee is consumed by millions of people every day, yet we still know surprisingly little about how it relates to our metabolism and hormones. What stood out in our findings was a distinct hormonal signature that didn't disappear even after we took into account BMI and lifestyle factors, with several of these associations differing between men and women," says Luca Verroest, lead author of the study and Doctoral Researcher at the University of Oulu.
The results suggest that hormonal pathways may partly explain the relationship between coffee consumption and metabolic health. However, as this was an observational study, the findings demonstrate associations rather than cause-and-effect relationships.
Journal Reference: Verroest, L., Jokelainen, J., Choudhary, S. et al. Associations of habitual coffee intake with testosterone and cardiometabolic markers: the Northern Finland birth cohort 1966 study. Eur J Nutr 65, 215 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00394-026-04038-z
(Score: 5, Funny) by gawdonblue on Wednesday September 30, @08:06AM
10 cups of coffee a day hasn't turned me into Adonis. Maybe 20 would do the trick.
(It might be good for the rest of the body but the bladder really cops a hiding.)
(Score: 4, Funny) by pkrasimirov on Wednesday September 30, @09:48AM (2 children)
Coffee drinkers get more nervous, move more, spend the calories, get healthier bodies?
Are energy drinkers getting the same correlation?
Sorry, didn't read TFA to see if these were ruled out.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 30, @08:34PM
The more timely question in the age of ADHD is: does the caffeine increase or decrease the ability to focus and pay attention?
My question for the study is: did they control for coffee vs decaf vs pure caffeine - but I lack the attention span to RTFA and need to control my blood pressure anyway, so even decaf is off the table for that goal.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 01, @06:54AM
People who can enjoy drinking multiple cups of poison[1] daily for decades tend to have tougher bodies that stay healthier for longer?
The weaker and sick ones drop out of drinking multiple cups of coffee to one or zero cups.
[1] Coffee can kill dogs and cats. Kills insects, snails and slugs too.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday September 30, @01:33PM (2 children)
Reminds me of those studies showing that wine is good for you. Those studies were obviously biased. Wine makers ballyhooed the heck out of them, read more into them than they actually said. Seems there is some real benefit. But the question I wanted answered, but which so far as I saw was ignored, was, is grape juice even better for your health? Wine without the alcohol, surely that's healthier?
And I have seen mention of "juice abuse", in which toddlers get fat from being given too much fruit juice. Fruit juice isn't especially healthy. Removing all the pulp leaves basically what amounts to scarcely more than flavored sugar water. Empty calories. Eating the fruit is best of all. So, are table grapes healthier than grape juice, which is healthier than wine?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by pTamok on Wednesday September 30, @02:19PM (1 child)
Eh. Lots of confounders in alcohol studies.
Essentially, most studies are population studies of one type of another, taking place over an extended period. They are often reliant on people correctly recalling how much alcohol they drink, and being honest about it. I think the 'rule of thumb' amongst doctors is that people tend to underestimate, so you need to double what they claim they drink to get an reasonable estimate of how much they actually drink. Furthermore, there's a segment of the population who don't drink - and the reasons could be philosophical (teetotal), health (too ill to drink), or possibly other reasons.
The people who are too ill to drink make the teetotal statistics look bad, because if you look at the mortality statistics and lump all non-drinkers together, they look pretty unhealthy.
You also have the problem that drinking is associated with lifestyle and health choices in general - people who eat a carefully chosen healthy diet are likely to drink less than people who don't do that. Same with exercise.
The end result is that it is very difficult to determine a dose-response relationship between the amount people drink and mortality or other health outcomes (e,g, cancer, cardio-vascular events(heart-attacks and strokes)). People often talk about a 'J'-shaped curve where not drinking is scores slightly worse than drinking a little, but the effect soon reverses. This is what informs recommendations about not drinking more than 28 10 ml units of alcohol per week (if you are an average male), or 21 units, or 14 units, or 7 (depending on when and where the recommendation was made). These days, I think the recommendation is zero - in other words, alcohol is harmful at any dose.
Lots of people don't like that message. Studies are criticised and picked apart, and claims are made about methodological flaws, bias and so on.
The thing is, on the whole, people are comfortable with others taking risks, like driving a car, (Whole life chance of being killed in a car accident in the USA is about 1 in 100), riding horses [wifitalents.com], free solo climbing, working on rooves - so alcohol use is just one of many risky activities people indulge in. This doesn't mean we should ignore it.
One way of looking at it is to estimate, from populations statistics, approximately by how many minutes your life is shortened by drinking one unit of alcohol. It's not exact, but give you a feel:
National Center for Alcohol Statistics: Alcohol Impact on Life Expectancy Calculator [alcoholabusestatistics.org]
Obviously, because it averages out over a population, it is not a personal prediction as such, but illustrates a trend. Again, the methodology can be criticised, but it might make you think about your own personal choices.
Is wine healthy? Probably not. But people choose to do unhealthy things because they enjoy them. Everyone has a personal enjoyment/risk balance. I won't tell you where you should be on that balance, and whether you should drink at all. I make my own choice, but I try to make it an informed one. Choosing ignorance is also a possible choice, and plenty of people prefer not to know.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday September 30, @02:35PM
Preferred hobbies. A staggering quantity of table saw injury stories start out with "I only had two or three beers..." and end with a finger on the floor or worse. You need to keep your wits about you with high voltage vacuum tube power supplies; drunkards can work on transistor electronics but post 1980 or so, "newer" high Vceo bipolar or "modern" high Vds FET transistors mean people can electrocute themselves working on transistor RF circuits just as well as grandpa's vacuum tube gear, not really sure that a technological improvement but whatever. Or my dad had an old motorcycle riding buddy who refused to drink before riding. Or every pilot I've ever met and my own experience in ground school where there's a pilot meme "24 hour bottle to throttle" if you want to fly an airplane, so pilots actually drink a lot less than you'd think from watching hollywood movies, or more accurately they party like rock stars in the rare event they can legally drink.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday September 30, @02:21PM
I doubt they took the full lifestyle / exercise thing into consideration. I lift weights but thats rare so I don't count. For "most lazy americans" the only exercise they get is walking to the bathroom and taking care of things.
Caffeine is a diuretic (you gonna pee no matter if you need to or not, its a poison response by the kidneys) and there's the water in the drink itself.
So, surely, non-drinkers sit there until they get leg vein blood clots, coffee drinking men have to get up and pee standing up, and the ladies get substantial additional leg exercise by peeing sitting down.
Its hard to take a study like this seriously when there's big problems like this. Also it turns into a cholesterol type situation where everyones making lots of money off the "problem" but no one is discussing the scale of the results. There's a reason why lifespan increases are not discussed in statin TV commercials LOL... because there isn't any LOL, or more accurately the measured amount has historically always been smaller than the detected error bands. I assume if they're not bragging about the numbers, they're smaller than the error bands or irrelevant such that if they think the results are useless I surely can't be motivated, pre-breakfast tea time, to look the numbers up.
Speaking of breakfast tea, the main difference between coffee and tea, is tea actually tastes good, so I'm curious if the microscopic irrelevant results are due to the water and caffeine or the trace element flavorings in people's beverage of choice.
Another issue not discussed is when I was a kid, for like my grandparents generation, coffee meant ... coffee. Maybe a dash of real dairy cream from a cow not a chemical factory and maybe a spoon or less of sugar from a plant not some mystery substance from a chemical factory. "Coffee" to anyone under 50 in the USA means some abomination from Starbucks that costs $11 and is 50% corn syrup and similar chemistry set experiments. There's been a marketing effort to F up my tea by adding stuff but I drink it straight, looseleaf black tea no WTF added, generally. Sometimes a drop or two of honey on the lip of the glass is a weird pick me up once in a while, although I'm well aware its bad for me at least it tastes good.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30, @02:59PM (1 child)
Five cups of coffee per day is not free; you're measuring economic position.
Damn rights people with more money can eat healthier and get a gym membership or be part of a sports club.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday September 30, @05:57PM
This wouldn't surprise me. More well off being more healthy in general, because they can afford to eat healthier, etc.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday September 30, @08:03PM
Finland. I'm sure they need a few cups just to warm up. But considering their population it must be a very slow acting aphrodisiac. Did they do some comparative analysis with similar effects from Sauna and Koskenkorva?
As far as I can recall, did not notice if mentioned, Finland have one of the highest per capita coffee consumption levels in the world already. I wonder how this then compares to less caffeinated populations.