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Coffee turns out to be good for your health...as long as you drop all the bad habits that go with it.
Older adults who drink coffee have a lower risk of death by about 10 percent, according to a large observational study of over 400,000 people published in The New England Journal of Medicine. The study, which followed participants aged 50 to 71 during a 14-year window, examined common causes of death, including heart and respiratory disease, stroke, injuries and accidents, diabetes, and infections. For each life-ending ailment, coffee drinking correlated with lower risk of death in both men and women, with cancer being the only condition that showed no correlation in women and a slight increase in risk of death for men who are heavy coffee drinkers.
However, while it would be easy to draw the conclusion that drinking coffee helps you live longer, the raw data from the study actually shows coffee drinkers die younger. Why? Because a number of bad habits and detriments to longevity are associated with coffee drinking, likely negating any benefits from coffee itself.
The study was conducted by researchers at the National Cancer Institute and funded by the NIH and AARP as part of a diet and health study in older Americans (unfortunately, the full article is behind a paywall, but you can access the abstract here). The data were collected via a baseline questionnaire that gauged demographic and lifestyle characteristics along with diet, then monitored until they died or the study ended.
When the data were first analyzed, coffee consumption was associated with an increase in the mortality of both men and women. To arrive at the result that coffee drinking may lower the risk of death, the researchers accounted for particularly damaging vices that coffee drinkers are more prone to engage in, such as smoking. It was only after accounting for the statistical contribution that smoking adds to increasing the rate of mortality did they arrive at the result that coffee drinkers have increased longevity.
Analysis of the study generally showed that the more coffee consumed, the lower the risk of death. (image: LA Times)
A quote from the study indicates the bad habits that coffee drinkers are guilty of:
As compared with persons who did not drink coffee, coffee drinkers were more likely to smoke cigarettes and consume more than three alcoholic drinks per day, and they consumed more red meat. Coffee drinkers also tended to have a lower level of education; were less likely to engage in vigorous physical activity; and reported lower levels of consumption of fruits, vegetables, and white meat.
With over 170 million Americans drinking coffee and over 1 billion coffee drinkers worldwide (coffee is the second largest commodity in the world, after all), the effects of coffee on health have been researched and disputed for a long time. Previous studies have shown that coffee has multiple benefits that can fight depression, prevent diabetes, protect against liver fibrosis, and even help fight cancer, but the scope of this most recent study helps to take a much broader view of its benefits, even taking into account the known problems with observational studies. Although this study shifts the tug-of-war between the health benefits and risks of coffee back toward the healthy side, the particularly damning observation that the health benefits of coffee are negated by a slew of poor lifestyle choices is a lesson for both coffee and non-coffee drinkers alike.
But ultimately the issue of this study is, if coffee is preventative medicine, drink it up. If it’s poison, everyone should avoid it. Simple, right? Well, not exactly.
The question of whether coffee is good or bad for you is inherently a complex one. The process of roasting coffee produces over 1,000 compounds — some of which are antioxidants, while about 19 are known rodent carcinogens. These compounds create the taste and aromatic richness associated with different roasts. But the fact remains that the vast majority of these compounds have not been tested individually for their health effects and likely won’t be for a long time to come.
Furthermore, the study suffers from another longstanding problem from large-scale statistical analyses, which the authors admitted: correlation does not mean causation. In other words, it is impossible to tell whether coffee itself directly contributed to extending the lifetimes of drinkers or if coffee drinking is part of a lifestyle of people who tend to live longer.
But coffee drinkers in general can help their longevity through some simple lifestyle changes, such as quitting smoking (in case you haven’t heard that before) and joining the 35 percent of coffee drinkers who take it black, which eliminates the milk and sugar both of which are detrimental if you’re drinking 4-5 cups a day.
This study illustrates just how tricky it is to fish out all the lifestyle factors that impact health. But in the end, one thing is clear: coffee’s reputation isn’t as black as previously labeled.
[Media: flickr, LA Times, sxc]
[Sources: Coffee Chemistry, NEJM, Science Daily]
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Your article says this:
“When the data were first analyzed, coffee consumption was associated with an increase in the mortality of both men and women. To arrive at the result that coffee drinking may lower the risk of death, the researchers accounted for particularly damaging vices that coffee drinkers are more prone to engage in, such as smoking. It was only after accounting for the statistical contribution that smoking adds to increasing the rate of mortality did they arrive at the result that coffee drinkers have increased longevity.
“A quote from the study indicates the bad habits that coffee drinkers are guilty of: As compared with persons who did not drink coffee, coffee drinkers were more likely to smoke cigarettes and consume more than three alcoholic drinks per day, and they consumed more red meat. Coffee drinkers also tended to have a lower level of education; were less likely to engage in vigorous physical activity; and reported lower levels of consumption of fruits, vegetables, and white meat.”
And then says this:
“Furthermore, the study suffers from another longstanding problem from large-scale statistical analyses, which the authors admitted: correlation does not mean causation. In other words, it is impossible to tell whether coffee itself directly contributed to extending the lifetimes of drinkers or if coffee drinking is part of a lifestyle of people who tend to live longer.”
… what?
“….what?”
Means they wasted the grant money to find out that some coffee drinkers die, but non coffee drinker also die, and that the coffee doesnt matter nearly as much as the 2 orders of hashbrowns and 3 packs/day of marlboros.
Hopefully this clarifies what I was getting at in this article:
The study says, “The risk of death was increased among coffee drinkers.” But when bad habits are factored out, such as smoking, coffee drinkers have a lower risk of mortality.
But the researchers can’t say conclusively whether coffee contains ingredients beneficial to health or whether people who drink coffee just so happen to engage in activities that benefit their health, like being more active. They can’t conclude that because it is an observational study only.
However, because of all the bad habits that coffee drinkers have, it is much more likely that it is coffee that is lowering the risk of death.
So that’s why I gave the article this title.
If I can paraphrase, coffee drinkers as a group are known to engage in some bad behaviors which shorten their life.
When you account for those known bad behaviors, coffee drinkers live longer. That’s either due to the coffee or possibly additional behaviors that weren’t accounted for.
Ahh, thank you, that helped a lot.
Actually, it just seems to show that among people with bad habits, coffee seems to mitigate those bad effects. The question I have is does coffee help people who just drink coffee but eat well, exercise and do other good things?
it means that at first people thought coffee was bad for you, because we were unaware of analagous factors statistically associated with coffee drinkers (other habits such as smoking, excessive alcohol drinking, lower levels of education and not eating the right balance of foods or excercising enough… strangely). it also means, that we are uncertain weather or not the actual coffee is causing the good health effects, or if it’s just something healthy people do.
basically… if you want to assume coffee is good for you that’s fine, but you have a slightly more difficult time to do all those other things which you already know are good for you anyway. if that is the case, then it won’t matter weather the coffee is creating the health benifits or it’s just you.
so you can drink coffee knowing you’ll have to try harder, but live longer presumably from the antioxidants–and whatever of those other 1000 chemicals from the slow roasting process we don’t understand yet that have magical powers. (a few of which we think are carcinogenic but apparently pretty benign or negated by the other chemicals that we are also discovering which actually somehow cures cancer too–which you forgot to list in your list of ironic juxtaposed excerpts)
it is a pretty sketchy and convoluted topic. there’s basically some probably good health benifits, and a few minor problems it seems.
being an avid coffee drinker, and excerciser, and intellectual and recovering substance abuser, i feel gives me a frame of reference for all of its paradoxes. i feel i know exactly what this is all about. i am going to theorize that decaffinated coffee drinkers would not exhibit the same co-dependence on other substances etc. bad habits. also, i forsee starbucks slow roasted toxins filtered coffee (possibly the good molecules amplified either genetically or through concentrated factory processes).
luv y’all <3 peace.
^ was supposed to be a reply to LiliBlume’s thoughtful realisation of the paradoxes included in this study before i had to log in and it fell to the bottom of the page ; ;
hmm i also kind of feel like i understand how it changes dietary patterns. i notice after drinking a bunch of coffee that i don’t prefer to eat a bunch of fruits and vegetables immediately; in fact sometimes it makes me incredibly naseous. i think this has something to do with what the acidity in the coffee does to the lining of the stomach. to correct this, i eat some yogurt after my coffee, which has bacteria that are good for that stuff (even dental issues). i also seem to crave oily foods like cheese or bacon after a bunch of coffee (bacon + coffee is incredibly good… tasting lol, but yea… bacon), maybe they balance out the ph or something, not sure. after doing that, then i can stomach those more difficult to digest fibrous foods. and then i excercise like craaazy. incline pushups. walkin my dog, and using the stairs instead of the elevator.
hmmm…that’s an intriguing possibility begging for a study to be done: to what extent does coffee promote the physiological desires (not merely the sociological ones) for smoking cigarettes, eating red meat, and drinking alcohol?
but a better and cheaper study would be to determine if these bad habits are limited to US coffee drinkers or if they are observed globally.
I’ve reduced my own consumption of coffee due to a medical issue this month. While coffee wasn’t the primary cause of the ailment, it was a contributing factor. But the secondary meaning I get from your story is if a person drinks coffee, they won’t have rats.
Too bad I can’t stand the taste of coffee. My wife says it’s an acquired taste and I’ll grow to like it, but I’m not sure I want to go thru that stage. I still haven’t acquired a taste for beer, despite drinking it occasionally for several years.
Also, I don’t think caffeine really does much for me. I can drink a Mountain Dew and I don’t really notice anything. Possibly a sugar buzz if anything.
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