Links between coffee and health
news.harvard.edu
news.harvard.edu
- Coffee consumption is not uniform throughout the population. For example, I'm willing to wager that people that eat a lot of truffles and Beluga caviar are among the healthiest and longest living people in the world. Anyone care to wager why?
- Long term controlled studies on human subjects are tricky. Can you imagine taking 100 people at random (not volunteers!) and forcing half to drink coffee, and half not to drink coffee for 30 years?
- Plausible mechanisms are always incredibly easy to postulate since we still have lots of things we do not understand about the human metabolism.
Unless the effect is very, very strong, observational studies are going to be rife with false positives and spurious correlations due to Simpson's paradox. Ignore this awful article, and almost all dietary advice in this vein.
If a researcher designs a great experiment, but after collecting and analyzing all the data comes to the conclusion that there is no link between eating chocolate and health, then she will a horrible time publishing it in a respected science journal, even if that's what the data says.
Since journals want to publish interesting articles more than boring ones, and articles that are likely to be cited more often than articles without follow-up results, there is a bias against accepting negative results. As scientists are judged by the number of things they get published, and the number of citations their papers get, they have every incentive to only publish positive results.
The extent to which you can adjust for a confounder depends not just on your sample size but also on on whether you were able to measure that confounder without bias. Big samples don't reduce bias.
Numerous examples exist of people who are dead certain that they've accounted for every possible confounder and that they've measured those confounders in exactly the right way... except they didn't.
My favorite example of this is the benefits of modest alcohol consumption. The group of people who don't drink include those who abstain from alcohol for medical reasons (former alcoholics or medication that doesn't mix well with alcohol) and so of course non-drinkers are going to be less healthy on average than someone who likes a drink every once in a while. It sounds obvious when I state it like this and you would figure every questionnaire and analysis would take it into account, but study after study after study investigating the effect of alcohol on heart health over a timespan of half a century failed to take this possibility into account.
Cf. http://www.annalsofepidemiology.org/article/S1047-2797(07)00...
(There are similar concerns about e.g. the risks associated with red meat and the benefits associated with breastfeeding, two other scientific findings that have become conventional wisdom but that in fact we are still uncertain about.)
Caffeine increases basal metabolic rate in adults.[43][44][45] In postmenopausal women, high caffeine consumption can accelerate bone loss.[46][47]"
I wonder how partial this article and/or harvards caffeine research is..
We all know it is a combination of things: the food you eat, how active you are, the air you breathe, the work you do, etc.
It's even better if you skip the fries.
I believe in staying away from foods high in lipids in general, but fast food burgers don't scare me. It's fries and pizzas that I abhor.
However, I agree with your point that there are healthier food options out there if you have the choice.
American Journal of Physiology, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Annals of nutrition & metabolism, etc.
If you have issues with those sources, fine, but saying "don't cite Wikipedia" when the article is well-cited is not useful in the least.
You're absolutely correct that information needs to be validated, but wrong in singling out Wikipedia. This rabbit hole goes pretty far. I've found false citations from published articles. Conservatively assuming 25 citations per article, the amount you have to validate is 25^(citation depth).
There are 11 citations in the above quote, so here's the homework you're requesting: Level 0 validation: 11 Articles Level 1 validation: 275 Articles Level 2 validation: 6875 Articles
The knee-jerk distrust of Wikipedia is so old that a paper was published in Nature in 2005 showing accuracy close to that of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia
Just like any other source, you have to assess it. How many editors, to which degree is it a target for vandalism or astroturfing, how well is the article written, the type of the subject material, etc.
Therefore I would expect britannica-level accuracy on the caffeine page, and that's pretty good for most discussions.
http://www.9news.com.au/national/2015/09/15/12/13/australias...
I've always found this paradigm troubling. Any class I've been in has banned the use of wikipedia - but not big-jims-site-o-facts.com, freewebs.com/someuser/page-copied-from-wikipedia.html, or president-facts-dynamic-dns.us.to/obama.html . I'm not saying wikipedia is perfect - but the simple fact that people have bots that monitor pages for bad edits I'm much more likely to believe a wikipedia page than some random buzzfeed article.
I think that's part of the problem. You (almost blindly) trust it. Not saying Wikipedia in any way can be compared to buzzed articles, but people don't use buzzfeed articles to make a scientific point in an argument because Buzzfeed is very explicit about what it is and what is not.
I feel with Wikipedia it is not as clear, so when using it for your arguments, one should treat it with caution.
Are you sure about this assertion?
The site is full of neglecting to give credit where credit is due [0] [1] [2], spreading false rumors about important topics [3], and blatantly lying that their business does not rely solely on clickbait [4]
[0] https://imgur.com/gallery/r8VBF [1] https://imgur.com/gallery/7Ah53 [2] http://gawker.com/5922038/remix-everything-buzzfeed-and-the-...
[3] http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/07/buzzfeed-helped-spread-...
[4] http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/why-buzzfeed-doesnt-do-clic...
While you, an informed HN reader, would not take BF seriously, unfortunately very many people do.
I saw many comments on facebook from pregnant mothers claiming that they threw away all plastic in their house. If they bothered to actually read the official study - they would know that was not necessary. I understand they wanted to be careful - but plastic and materials made of plastic have been around for many many years. Unless they were burning plastic or using plastic exclusively - judging from years of exposure I think there are more important household hazards than that.
Again - I'm more likely to believe a wikipedia article with cited sources than a bias site or news report. But yet when you are taught in class - that freewebs site that is made by some random guy is more of a reliable site than a site that can be updated and monitored by people around the world. That's my problem and point. For academia we shouldn't say "you can't use wikipedia but any other site is ok" - but rather "find N articles that support this fact or opinion - where wikipedia is ok to include as a supporting article".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Academic_use
http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k70847&pageid=i...
"Don't use wikipedia as a source" is very different from "use buzzfeed as a source".
EDIT:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia
> As with any source, especially one of unknown authorship, you should be wary and independently verify the accuracy of Wikipedia information if possible. For many purposes, but particularly in academia, Wikipedia may not be an acceptable source;[1] indeed, some professors and teachers may reject Wikipedia-sourced material completely.[2] This is especially true when it is used without corroboration. However, much of the content on Wikipedia is itself referenced, so an alternative is to cite the reliable source rather than the article itself.
> We advise special caution when using Wikipedia as a source for research projects. Normal academic usage of Wikipedia and other encyclopedias is for getting the general facts of a problem and to gather keywords, references and bibliographical pointers, but not as a source in itself. Remember that Wikipedia is a wiki, which means that anyone in the world can edit an article, deleting accurate information or adding false information, which the reader may not recognize.
I don't see why "drinking coffee is good" is any more controversial than "eating fruits is good". When people talk about the benefits of fruit juices do you accuse them of sponsorship ?
Even if we say "healthy" means a prevention of disease and/or a longer lifespan, tea still needs the "in moderation" addendum. Fluorosis is common among people who drink large quantities of certain types of green tea, for example, and fruit juice could obviously contribute to diabetes. Having one alcoholic drink a night has a lot of measured benefit that disappears when you pass 2 drinks.
In other words, "healthy" (as defined above) is not an attribute of just the substance but also the quantity and duration and a bunch of other important things.
Which is why "_____ is good for you!" can be generally discarded as standalone advice.
not only that, Steve Jobs' obsession with fruit juices has been speculated to have caused or contributed to his pancreas cancer .
http://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/soy-alert/veganthi...
I take two weeks off from drinking coffee each year (not because of the coffee, it just works out that way).
I had horrible withdrawal the first year, and switched from 3ish cups of American style coffee to 3ish shots of espresso with water or milk. Same amount of liquid, but considerably less caffeine. I haven't had withdrawal problems since.
After only a few months I noticed my vision was getting blurry, lacking focus, and there was some visual swirling as if I was on LSD. Fast-forward another 9 months and colors were muted, all emotions were numbed, I was insanely irritable, and I felt completely distant from the world. I felt so numb to life that I was very close to seeking therapy due to increased thoughts of suicide. On weekends I never had caffeine, but one day I decided to try some tea. That little amount of caffeine was enough to kick me out of the withdrawals and and make me realize it was the caffeine that was causing it.
It's been two months since I last had caffeine and I'm still going through withdrawals. For a while I had to take ibuprofen because the headaches were so severe, but now it's just a slight head pressure. Colors are popping, sunlight is gorgeous, I can focus on words in a sentence without my vision darting around. It's better, but I know there's still another month or two to fully reset. I'm getting back to feeling like I did in grade school though which is amazing to me. I've always drank large amounts of soda since middle school/high school, so I've likely always been impacted by caffeine like this at a smaller scale.
I had actually tried stopping early on, but was sticking with decaf and only for two weeks which wasn't long enough to notice anything.
For some added info, I have the A;C form of http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Rs762551 which supposedly makes me metabolize caffeine more slowly.
For me it's just very mild (as in I barely notice) headaches and a vague under-the-weather feeling; to others I probably seem a bit grumpy. After a day or two of abstaining, the symptoms disappear.
Sure, it's vaguely annoying, but nothing more. When I travel or something and end up not drinking coffee for a while, it's simply not an issue.
Recently, I had some stomach troubles and doctor told me to cutback or completely stop drinking coffee to help stomach heal.
I decided to go cold turkey. Figured it would speed up recovery. A bad mistake. Headaches and irritation was easy to control and disappeared within couple of days. But my body is so dependent on caffeine. I had constipation, I could not motivate myself to go workout in evenings, I felt the world was moving at different pace than me. I just felt all sorts of wrong and I keep on thinking it was just a pace it pass soon.
Finally, I could not take it. Went back to drinking as much coffee as I needand life is great now.
That's what I thought. The I went through a rough patch with no money as a student and couldn't afford it. The first two weeks taught me that it was actually a monkey on my back. I can't think of a better term but I felt like boiled shit.
I only drink water now.
I still own that powerbook and it still works and thanks to it I learned to cook so it was a good investment in the long run.
http://www.evidentlycochrane.net/caffeine-and-health-evidenc...
It's a short list.
Said by Alfréd Rényi about his friend Paul Erdos.
Methamphetamine was the standard military "go pill" for decades. Then dextroamphetamine. Now there's interest in modafinil, which has milder side effects.[0,1]
I have a lot of ideas for future directions of study regarding coffee: my primary interest is teasing the health impacts of espresso beans vs regular beans in varying roast states, if there are any such differences. Additionally, I wonder if there's any studies on the social impact of coffee consumption. I take most of my coffee alone, but I used to have a raucous coffee group a few years back, and it's well understood that social interaction is good for your health. I also wonder if there's any studies which examine the rates and contexts/reasons that people in different professions consume coffee. All of the lawyers/scientists/doctors/software engineers I know tend to always have a cup in hand-- especially the doctors.
I did a time-management course, a part of which required writing down how I spend my work hours. I saw an hourly cycle of get coffee, work 1 hour, pee, repeat. If i was drinking enough water to pee hourly my liver may also be great!
Seeing studies and science like this makes me wonder though. People do know that coffee and tea is healthy for them, so why use it still in advertisment?
Smoking is bad for people, yet people do not need convincing to continue consumption.
Is it an additional argument for you when you're buying coffee or tea, that it's healthy for you?
I started to drink more tea, but annoyingly I have kidney stones and tea has a lot of oxalate. No such problem with coffee.
As for emotional arguments about 'going against your body' that's religion. Your body was designed to resist constant parasitic infestation, never be washed and exercise hard every day, all day. Who wants to live that way? You could consider 3 meals a day as 'going against your body'.
For example, we were built to receive all sorts of positive side effects from exercise. If you don't exercise at all you lose those benefits. It's doable -- many people don't exercise -- but it's a loss to be sure.
Another example, using your three meals... We were not built to be eating as much as most of us do as consistently as we do. Take one look around you and see how many people are headed in the direction of obesity.
When you combine the eating and the exercise you get a deadly combination.
And there are other examples of "going against the grain," which when taken individually are not hugely detrimental but when you add them up they are harmful.
Yes it's addictive, and that would be hard, but I'd just have to deal with it. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with enjoying something that's at least to some degree addictive (exercise, programming, watching series on netflix) so long as there are other reasons besides the addiction satisfaction that you enjoy it. That is certainly true for coffee.
By that logic, the majority of people would hardly be able to believe a single scientific fact. According to my own physical experience and reasoning independent of what I've gathered from others, I have come to the conclusion that the sun revolves around the Earth.
Most gen-y humans I know make the same complaints about cooking at home.
We should eat Chipotle every night.