Drinking coffee may cut risk of chronic liver disease, study suggests | Hacker News Reader

Drinking coffee may cut risk of chronic liver disease, study suggests

theguardian.com

22 pointsdigital5524 comments

The actual paper is here: https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s...

I'm super skeptical about these types of studies in general. 'Wonder food' studies always end up being a little too good to be true.

The discussion section of the paper lists an awful lot of caveats to the methodology of data collection and removal of confounding factors.

Yes I often suspect "eating x luxury leads to y health benefit" is a conflation of diet and wealth.

Being wealthy leads to more luxury food choices and better access to health care.

> The team said the magnitude of the effect increased with the amount of coffee consumed, up to about three to four cups a day, “beyond which further increases in consumption provided no additional benefit”.

> A reduction in risk was also found when instant, decaffeinated and ground coffee were considered separately – although the latter linked to the largest effect.

The article also notes that the information was gathered with a one-time questionnaire, and that diet and exercise are important factors (of course).

I cut alcohol more than a year ago, and go on and off with coffee (The hardest relative luxury for me to let go, after chocolate, which I do go without unless someone offers). I’m curious what the inflection point is with coffee; how little confers benefit, below which are diminishing returns? Or is it linear up to the 3-4 cup cutoff?

The benefits stop when you start shaking and can't sleep.

Is it possible that the appetite-suppressing effects of coffee are at play here? I’ve read about the general health benefits of reducing calories and I wonder how big a factor that is in caffeine/coffee studies.

This.

For many people including me, coffee consumption throughout the day reduces the appetite a lot. Two cups of coffee and my food consumption might be 25 per cent lower.

That said, this effect may be balanced out by all the people who just must have a cake with their coffee and who sweeten their coffee with sugar.

Also, none of the booze lovers I know drink coffee much. As if the beverages were somehow incompatible. This will show on the liver side as well.

Cocaine has a similar appetite suppressant effect. I wonder if anyone has looked at the long term health of models (where use is, apparently, common) to see if there are benefits.

Can't say I am eager to try that one out, but yeah, people who do coke are usually slender.

That said, when they do coke, they do at least half chalk. Pure cocaine is not easy to buy on the other side of the Atlantic.

Have you ever tried to quit cold turkey? It was brutal for me.

How could something that hard to stop be good for you?

It's a counter exemple extremely overused and a bit tongue in cheek but : try to see how long you can go without breathing, then ask yourself the same question again.

If you work out frequently, stopping that cold turkey is brutal also. Working out is unquestionably good for you. How hard it is to stop has nothing at all to do with how good it is for you. No comment on if it's good or not, but your comment has no bearing.

What has "hard to stop" common with "bad for you"?

I tried to quit HN cold turkey once. I held out for like 16 hours.

Won't even entertain the thought with tea or coffee.

Which coffee "research" is this so far in the last year? One time it's bad for you, then it's good for you. Then it's bad for you again, then it's good for you.

Coffee is a fruit. Fruit and vegetable consumption is unquestionably good for your health. I don't know why people find it so shocking that drinking coffee would be healthy.

Experts generally regard fruit consumption as beneficial due to the fiber, not so much the rest of it, and squeezing the fruit for its juice (or drying it) is viewed as a risk of excessive sugar intake.

In any event, in the case of coffee its consumption bears little resemblance to what would ordinarily be regarded as a fruit.

Fruits are full of phytochemicals like polyphenols that have shown interesting health effects. Coffee has quite a high polyphenols content too.

Phytochemicals literally just means "chemicals from a plant", which include the infamous antioxidants as well as toxins, hormone disruptors, GABA agonists and other poisons in general.

Some fruits have some compounds, along thousands of unspecified others, which seem to have a beneficial effect, most often in-vitro.

Regarding polyphenols, there is no hard, concrete evidence that any have actual positive health benefits.

One thing is for sure, the marketing surrounding these "5 a day to be healthy" is extremely strong and widespread.

> Experts generally regard fruit consumption as beneficial due to the fiber,

This is an outdated theory, that is no longer supported by the current state of the research. The health benefits of fruits and vegetables is primarily driven by phytochemical, not fibers.[1]

[1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3650511/

The above comment has so many levels of generalisation and misconceptions that I wouldn't even know where to start debating it.

Not all fruit nor vegetables are healthy, unless you consider the healthy ones only (how do you determine that scientifically?) then it's just nonsense.

Also coffee is a seed first, and seeds in general are potentially the most toxic, as evolution would prefer seeds to grow, instead of being eaten. The fact that the toxic compounds of a seed give us a nice buzz and don't kill us instead is a pretty nice coincidence.

And let's not even go into the "are fruits really healthy?" debate which is long, as reality is often more complex than quick slogans such as "eat colours and be healthy."

> Not all fruit nor vegetables are healthy,

Find a single peer-reviewed study that finds any widely consumed vegetable or fruit has negative correlation with all-cause mortality.

> Also coffee is a seed first, and seeds in general are potentially the most toxic,

Legumes, which as a class are seeds, have a very strong inverse relationship with all-cause mortality.[1] There's zero empirical reason to believe that seeds are unhealthy, and very strong reason to believe that seeds, as with any plant-based food, are widely health-promoting.

> And let's not even go into the "are fruits really healthy?" debate which is long

No it's not. Fruit consumption is strongly associated with lower all-cause mortality. Even controlling for vegetable consumption.[2] The science is settled. Denying that fruit consumption is health-promoting is about as scientifically illiterate as denying that cigarette smoothing is unhealthy.

[1]https://www.hindawi.com/journals/bmri/2017/8450618/ [2]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5837264/

You're right eating more plants is generally better for your health than the average western diet.

But not all seeds are good for you. Please don't eat apple seeds.

Many Legumes are f toxic. Don’t try to eat Sweet Peas. Before domestication beans had to be treated by soaking to leach out the toxic compounds. They only became benign through domestication selecting less toxic versions.

This is why you cook vegetables like potatoes and don't eat the green ones or sprouted ones.

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