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Comment by eloff | Hacker News Reader

I find this result surprising. Caffeine restricts blood vessels, so you'd expect blood pressure to go up the more you consume, and likewise you'd expect long-term elevated blood-pressure to increase your risk of cardiovascular disease.

Likewise in a correlational study, you'd expect people who drink more coffee to have more hectic lives and get less sleep, which surely shouldn't reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease.

I'm at a loss for a possible mechanism behind this result. Protective effect of antioxidants in coffee? Hard to believe.

Nonetheless it seems a great excuse to reach for that second cup when I start flagging in the early afternoon.

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Could it be caused from lifestyle factors that change with coffee.

the first examples that come to mind:

Coffee decreases appetite, which could reduce overeating, which could be linked to the noted reduction in type 2 diabetes which can be caused by eating too much sugar.

Similarly could it be that coffee increases activity which if used for exercise both reduces weight as well as improves the body's ability to manage blood pressure?

When you're flagging in the afternoon, possibly the best results from a health perspective could be to rest for a bit to let your body naturally regulate, or to do some brief but intense exercise to activate adrenals naturally, or eat a lighter or low carb lunch so there's less of a blood sugar drop-off.

Love to see a double blind with these alternatives measured against the extra coffees.

The problem is, you can't do a blind study with diet and exercise, because the subjects will know what they are doing. You could potentially do a caffeine pill study rather than a coffee study, but even that is hard to keep people from detecting.

On top of this, we're looking at long term studies that would be really hard to control.

Finally, the correlations noticed by these authors need to be taken with a huge grain of salt because there are so many potential confounding factors, such as income.

Plus, who knows if it’s the caffeine in the coffee or some other molecule floating in the brew.

In doubt, I’ll keep my moka close and well in use ;)

>> or to do some brief but intense exercise to activate adrenals naturally

I used this approach in college since I was not a coffee drinker. If I needed to study all night, or even for a few hours after a long day, I would work out either with some interval cardio or some light weight lifting.

It would easily wake me up and keep me going for at least 2-3 hours and I was able to focus rather easily and there was no crash from caffeine or energy drinks that are so popular now.

Only 13% of CVD deaths are caused by elevated blood pressure, and that is elevated blood pressure as a long-term condition, not the temporarily elevated blood pressure coffee may cause.

Just a speculation, maybe the temporary slightly elevated blood pressure from coffee is actually beneficial due to hormesis, just like stressing the body with strength or interval training is healthy in the long run as the body adapts and grows stronger.

It very well may be that income is a confounding variable. Being able to afford 3-5 cups/day means you’re more likely to have a relatively high income, and thus a better health situation.

> Being able to afford 3-5 cups/day means you’re more likely to have a relatively high income.

This is false: http://news.gallup.com/poll/184388/americans-coffee-consumpt...

”Fewer lower-income than higher-income Americans drink coffee, but lower-income coffee drinkers consume more cups per day than higher-income coffee drinkers (3.8 vs. 2.4 cups, on average)."

Does that include the entire lower-income population, or just those who drink coffee? I'm not sure I follow how those statistics disprove the parent comment suggestion that higher income people might be more likely to drink coffee.

Wouldn't that match this study?

Low income Americans driink either a lot or not any coffee at all. High income Americans drink some coffee.

So you would expect no coffee consumption and high coffee consumption to correlate with a higher risk than moderate consumption. This is exactly what the study found.

Do you have any source on that? I drink 3-5 cups a day and make basically nothing, and have an unrelated autoimmune disease.

I'm not sure if you're only thinking about buying pre-made coffee from convenience stores, Starbucks, etc. but coffee is very cheap to make yourself. It should only be cents a day unless you're using pretty high-end stuff.

Also, when it says 3-5 cups a day, that's the measurement unit "cup", not what most people would think of as "a cup of coffee". A typical size cup/mug of coffee is usually about 3-4 cups.

A cup is 8 fl oz, so a typical mug is 1.5 to 2 cups.

A cup in the study is defined as 8oz of brewed coffee I believe.

If you are an espresso drinker, it’s worth mentioning that a cup of brewed coffee contains almost 50% more caffeine than a single shot espresso. So we are talking about roughly 2-4 double shot espresso coffees per day.

5 cups/day isn't exactly breaking the bank, as long you're not drinking hipster sour watery stuff at $4.50/cup. I just drank instant coffee throughout college. At my high school, you could drop $10 into a jar for the "coffee club" and have unlimited coffee throughout the year (drip brew, pretty weak stuff).

> Being able to afford 3-5 cups/day means you’re more likely to have a relatively high income

You can buy a coffee maker for $12 on Amazon. Ground coffee is $7 for 12 oz or so, and you can make a pot of coffee (12 cups) a day for a couple weeks from that.

It's pretty durn cheap. It's probably the cheapest beverage other than tap water.

First time I was out of Italy I literally could not believe the price of coffee. And people could not believe me, when I told them how much cheaper it was in Italy. We’re talking 40 cents vs $2 (recent example I remember both prices for the same year, circa 2011). So yeah - depends on the country, or whether you make it yourself, coffee can be extremely cheap. No correlation between consumption and wealth (esp. in countries like Italy where literallly everyone drinks it)

In Italy bar personnel tends to be paid next to nothing for grueling shifts... it’s really incredible. But yeah, outside of tourist trap areas, your average caffè (that’d be the espresso) is usually around 80c

In Italy, the cost of the coffee as a service is much lower than in the rest of Europe and the USA. Espressos are made much faster and more frequently, the volume is lower which means they can be drunk quicker, and Italians generally spend less time in the cafe. Not to mention that in most of Europe, Italian coffee is served, which is more expensive there than in Italy. Even so, the cost of the actual coffee is only around 10 cents for quality beans.

You probably noticed that you pay more if you sit down. Drink at the bar and it’s usually cheaper.

Coffee is a lot more than just its caffeine.

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