Light to moderate coffee consumption is associated with lower risk of death | Hacker News Reader

Light to moderate coffee consumption is associated with lower risk of death

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

23 pointscaaqil48 comments

My coffee consumption is associated with lower risk of death to those around me, yes.

Thanks, but I'll wait a few years for the retractions. The same was said about alcohol (specifically, wine) a couple of years ago.

This, very much this. Coffee science is still in its infancy, specifically the effects of daily consumption of monoamine oxidase inhibitors with caffeine have not been studied enough.

There are some studies talking about neuroprotection and some about neurotoxicity. The one thing we do know is that the etiology of essential tremor requires a genetic disposition that makes the body unable to metabolise harmane, one of the MAO inhibitors in coffee, and the buildup is what causes the tremor.

I wonder if coffee consumption is correlated with white collar work.

Or in general with work. At least here it is common drink also for working class during coffee breaks.

I could see some compounding variables here. With availability and ability to drink it.

"At least here it is common drink also for working class during coffee breaks."

That's because the working class is more likely to be forbidden from having coffee at their job location. Folks with desk jobs just drink it at their desks.

This actually brings question of moderate coffee consumption. That is 3 cups a day in this study. Those who drink at desk might go over this and to high consumption.

From where I'm from, everybody drinks coffee. From the guys doing construction work to the CEO of very large companies.

I love coffee but I never noticed it getting me more wakey or energetic or anything. If I overdo it - I mean beyond a few cups - I get some jitters (while still being sleepy) so I know not to overdose. But I drink it for pleasure and missing on the effects.

Coffee affects folks differently. I've never noticed a particular pick-me-up from it or other caffeinated beverages, and haven't noticed a difference in sleep quality even if drinking before bed. I do get jitters or an upset stomach if I've had too much. I tend to drink a cup every few hours most days, but some days simply forget to drink as much. My father, on the other hand, really couldn't drink caffeine after noon-ish and expect to fall asleep that night. I've met folks that can drink a lot without seeming jittery and yet other folks can use coffee itself as a laxative.

> I've met folks that can drink a lot without seeming jittery

I know at least 2 people who had that; they consumed 2-3 pots per day and had no visible side effects until they did. They both had the same symptoms after about 10 years of doing that; all of a sudden (even after 1 cup) heavy anxiety attacks 'like having a heartattack' (or at least what they thought one might feel like) and insomnia. They cannot drink caffeinated beverages at all now; it immediately ends their day and one even has xanax with him at all times for when this happens (drinking something you did not consciously notice caffeine being in there).

For what it's worth, I can confirm this anecdotal evidence, something very similar happened to me and it felt surreal (and scary as hell).

This might have less to do with caffeine and more to do with brewed coffee’s fat-soluble monoamine oxidase inhibitors that tend to accumulate in brain tissues and have a half-life of months.

The anxiogenic effects of norharman and harman are somewhat well documented, and both of them are found in coffee brews in high amounts.

Coffee is weird for me. It doesn't really wake me up, but I get sleep issues if I drink it too late in the day.

I wonder how much it has to do with sleep. Could it be that people who drinks coffee a lot do that often because they are sleep-deprived?

Also if you drink more than 3 cups of coffee more often than not some of those cups are going to be consumed in the afternoon, which has a much bigger impact on your quality of sleep.

When I was drinking 4 cups of coffee a day I also didn't sleep nearly enough to function through 8 hours of workdays, especially in the afternoon. I have since taken quality of sleep more seriously and the need for coffee falls to about two cups (usually just a double espresso in the morning). It is of course just anecdotal though.

Sometimes it does, but people vary wildly in how they react to caffeine.

I don't notice a difference in sleep - I tend to wake up well-rested about 75-85% of the time (A monthly cycle of hormones definitely affects sleep and wakefulness). I've experimented, and drink more than 3 cups. I also don't get the pick-me up some folks get.

My father drank more than 3 cups per day - my parents would split a pot of coffee between them - but he drank decaf after noon. If he didn't stop caffeine, he couldn't fall asleep at night.

There are generic differences in people's ability to process caffeine, some at a much faster rate which means the effect isn't nearly as long.

Yeah you're right. This of course differs from person to person.

I was thinking about this article actually: https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/jul/06/caffeine-coffee...

> In fact, none of the sleep researchers or experts on circadian rhythms I interviewed for this story use caffeine.

> Walker explained that, for most people, the “quarter life” of caffeine is usually about 12 hours, meaning that 25% of the caffeine in a cup of coffee consumed at noon is still circulating in your brain when you go to bed at midnight. That could well be enough to completely wreck your deep sleep.

> I thought of myself as a pretty good sleeper before I met Walker. At lunch he probed me about my sleep habits. I told him I usually get a solid seven hours, fall asleep easily, dream most nights.

> “How many times a night do you wake up?” he asked. I’m up three or four times a night (usually to pee), but I almost always fall right back to sleep.

> He nodded gravely. “That’s really not good, all those interruptions. Sleep quality is just as important as sleep quantity.” The interruptions were undermining the amount of “deep” or “slow wave” sleep I was getting, something above and beyond the REM sleep I had always thought was the measure of a good night’s rest. But it seems that deep sleep is just as important to our health, and the amount we get tends to decline with age.

It seems to argue that at night, the remaining caffeine in your system is not enough to be effective, but enough to hurt your sleep quality.

I'm 39 and I've never drank coffee in my life. As a kid I didn't like what it did to adults ("I cannot work until I have my morning coffee") and from the smell I kinda extrapolated how it tastes like so I didn't need to try it. For me, coffee is like any other drug, it create addictions and should be illegal with all other drugs like alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, opioids etc.

I'm 41 and I've only tried coffee a few times and really don't like the taste. I don't like what it does to adults ("I cannot work until I have my morning coffee"). For me, coffee is like any other drug, your body, your life, your choice and should be legal with all other drugs like alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, opioids etc.

> For me, coffee is like any other drug, it create addictions and should be illegal with all other drugs like alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, opioids etc.

In what way does someone who drinks coffee or has a beer or a smoke as a responsible adult makes your life or society worse to the point that it warrants being illegal?

No-one's forcing anyone to drink coffee (a very mild stimulant by any standard). No-one dies of passive coffee drinking, no-one kills anyone because they got (or didn't get) their morning coffee, and there is growing evidence that moderate consumption has health benefits.

There are lots of things to say about coffee, some good, some bad, but jeez, that holier-than-thou attitude of wanting to make criminals of basically most of the planet is certainly something...

By the way, tea and sugar are also stimulants, that should take care of the rest of the globe.

It’s evidently good for you when drunk in moderation. Why would you want to ban it? It’s nothing like alcohol or tobacco. It also doesn’t lead to a dose increase or becoming seriously addicted.

For me, coffee isn’t only the welcome stimulant in the morning. It’s also childhood memories of the smell of Sunday morning breakfast at my grandparents’ place.

I guess you don't eat any sugar either?

Also, strange to suggest banning caffeine when discussing a study finding that it reduces risk of death.

Op here. I don't have sugar in my house, haven't had it for years. It's not needed for recipes I use, it's not in bread I bake, I would have no use for sugar.

But sugar is IMHO not mind altering drug like caffeine, sugar is just pure calories.

Not the OP, but indeed I never eat raw sugar nor dissolve it in hot water in order to drink it.

Nobody does that (or almost nobody?). Sugar consumption comes from almost everything nowadays, from white bread to sauces to... everything. Or maybe your comment was ironic and I didn't get it, sorry then.

I didn't go for ironic, but it was meant rhetorically. Attacking the OP by equating coffee intake with sugar intake is a bad faith argument, precisely because sugar is a prevalent food additive while coffee is not. Moreover, the OP clearly said "drinking coffee". not "ingesting coffee/caffeine".

Ever eat at Subway? There's ~9% sugar in just the bread. It's generally safe to extrapolate this as being the case for most ready/packaged/fast food.

In any case, it's very illuminating to look up nutritional info of things you eat every once in a while.

Not the OP, but this comes as a second nature to me. Checking what you put in your body is quite important.

Yes, let's make more substances illegal. It has worked really well in the past.

I understand not liking coffee, but calling for it to be illegal because _you_ don't like it is utter nonsense.

I was with you until.. all drugs should be illegal.

I'm turning 37 this year. And love coffee (medium-roasted arabica is about 99 out of every 100 of my cups), drink it often and feel great.

Don't see any negative impacts on my physical health, and as I enjoy coffee it has a definitely positive impact on my mental health.

Don't have a point to make here, just thought I would dilute this non-coffee drinkers fest.

Hey, while I'm at that, never deleted my FB account. Log in there once a month to see if anyone messaged me, the feed is always full of random crap instead of posts from people I follow -- boring, no idea why people find it so addictive.

> it create addictions and should be illegal

a bit hard to tell how one entails the other

For me, what should be illegal is harming others or compromising their safety under the influence of a drug, like drunk driving, but addiction is a medical problem and addicted people should never feel the need to fear law enforcement if we want them to get better.

Coffee consumption is about as harmless to other humans as you can get.

(Full disclosure: yes, I drink coffee, 95 per cent of it decaf.)

You can get addicted to anything, including things generally considered positive like sport, meditation or charity. Do you want to ban all of that?

As long as it doesn't have negative impact I don't see how "it's addictive to some people" should mean "it should be banned". What matters is how it effects you, not that it does at all.

Let people do what they want within reason. But for me, I've discovered that caffeine isn't helpful to me and I don't need it to function at all; I've only, in the past, been drinking caffeine in softdrinks and coffee because of the marketing of more energy but it doesn't really work for me.

Show me where coffee causes violent or asocial behaviour like alcohol or heroin and I'm with you.

People who haven't had their coffee fix in the morning are not anti-social? And if they have to wait to long (which gives headaches and an overal feeling of malaise in heavy coffee drinkers) they tend to get something I would call violent in the context of an office working environment.

Still, making something illegal never helped and moderation is not something most humans are good at. Everything is addictive and can cause anti-social behaviour (gaming...) and violent or dangerous (for themselves and/or their environment) behaviour up to some extend.

There are studies linking coffee consumption to alcoholism and heroin dependency. The key search terms are harman and norharman.

Coffee -- the ultimate gateway drug! Every cup is a baby-step towards the needle!

Would you be surprised if heroin addicts have chronically high blood harman levels? They do. Two of the most abundant sources in the human diet are coffee and tobacco smoke.

It has been postulated that some alcoholics use alcohol as a means to escape the anxiogenic (anxiety-generating) effects of harman.

I'd trade a coffee addiction for my Coca-Cola addiction in a heartbeat.

I tried coffee again the other week and almost vomited after the first sip. What I did learn is that there are just some things I just don't like, despite my best intentions.

Was it black coffee or latte?

I can't stand black coffee but find soy latte very pleasant to cosume.

> I didn't like what it did to adults

Or perhaps what you saw was the normal effect of aging: decrease in melatonin leading to tiredness in the morning.

> should be illegal

What I hear when you say this is "I don't like it, so nobody should have it". This is egocentric.

Is this something in coffee itself or is it the caffeine?

This is just music to my ears

Probably why you should be skeptical.

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