ANY AMOUNT OF COFFEE IN YOUR DAY STAVES OFF MORBIDITY

I know you love the taste of coffee.  If it's not the taste, then it's the memories, and to be more specific, it is the times that you drink or the people you've shared a cup with that you quietly and wordlessly enjoy the aroma, the warmth, and that special memory.  Few things in the world can produce such an effect.  But know, too, that coffee is a diuretic.  What that means is that you're going eliminate fluids from your body, fluids that contain certain health-preserving nutrients.  So it's a trade-off.  Aren't most things? 

O, Headlines!

CNBC: “Drinking as many as eight cups of coffee a day could help you live longer, study says”

Time:  “Drinking Coffee May Help You Live Longer, Study Says”

Boston Globe: “Drinking Up to 8 Cups of Coffee Per Day Might Help You Live Longer, Study Says”

South China Morning Post: “Coffee May Help You Live Longer, Even If You Drink Eight Cups a Day, New Study Shows”

Science Alert: “8 Coffees a Day Means a Longer Life Than No Coffee, According to a 10-Year Study”

The burst of reports on the benefits of coffee feels more like a campaign than a newsworthy news story.  First, they’re not health reports.  Without a context, the headlines, like all headlines, are fantastic.  They are slogans in a campaign, like “Drink coffee, live longer.”  Or “Cups of Coffee helps you live longer.”  So coffee is slowly but consistently being pitched as a health or age-defying concoction with the added benefit of a caffeine jolt that restores you to youthful energies.  The coffee industry is hopped up on its own product.  It’s salesmanship not on caffeine but on steroids.  And we’ve even heard from Dave Asprey, the Bulletproof Coffee guru.  I have no doubt that if you add fat—butter or coconut oil—to your coffee that you will feel a bigger and longer-lasting boost of energy than if you drank just a cup of black coffee.  So a new report was published by the The reporting is bad that to get to the truth of what the conclusions to the actual study said is like stepping through a minefield.  Here are the findings reported at JAMA, the Journal of American Medical Association: 

Findings  This large prospective cohort study of a half million people found inverse associations for coffee drinking with mortality, including among participants drinking 1 up to 8 or more cups per day. No differences were observed in analyses that were stratified by genetic polymorphisms affecting caffeine metabolism.

The headlines above poorly represent the details of the findings in the British study.  You need to drink 8 cups of coffee to get the benefits.  Any amount of coffee per day staves off morbidity regardless of if a person metabolizes coffee quickly or slowly.  The states that participants consumed a range of coffee from 1 to 8 cups.  So any amount of coffee that you drink each day has protective effects against morbidity.  Morbidity is illness or near-death disease.  So all that the study shows is that coffee keeps a diseased person alive longer.  So in this light, coffee is beneficial.  It gives people with states of morbidity more time.  

Conclusions and Relevance  Coffee drinking was inversely associated with mortality, including among those drinking 8 or more cups per day and those with genetic polymorphisms indicating slower or faster caffeine metabolism. These findings suggest the importance of noncaffeine constituents in the coffee-mortality association and provide further reassurance that coffee drinking can be a part of a healthy diet.

Put in this context, coffee is not the elixir that the industry is trying to make it out to be.  The anti-aging and health market is booming and it is lucrative.  Have you seen the prices of some of these high-end products?  Try finding a boutique, quality vitamin for under $50; hell, under $100.  So by positioning itself as a healthful elixir, the coffee industry is sure to gain an increase in market share of the health and health food industry.  

The article at MSNBC starts like this.  

Drinking coffee could boost your chances of a longer life, research shows, even for those who consume as many as eight cups a day. 

Note the reference to excessive coffee drinking.  Why are 8 cups a health hazard for some, while drinking a few cups evidently healthy?  Long-term coffee consumption lowers the risk of death.

In a study of around half-a-million British adults, coffee drinkers were found to have a slightly lower risk of death over a 10-year follow-up period than non-coffee drinkers.

And it doesn't matter the form of coffee, whether it's instant or brewed ground coffee.  The interesting part of the study that I liked was that benefits were experienced in folks with metabolic problems.  That's kind of powerful news.  

The apparent longevity boost comes as yet another piece of good news for coffee lovers, with health benefits recorded in drinkers of instant, ground and decaffeinated coffee. The study is also the first of its kind to suggest health benefits in people with so-called genetic glitches affecting how their bodies react to caffeine.

My one concern and one that is even noted by the study is that coffee is not the health elixir that it's being reported as.  Yes, it contains anti-oxidants.  And, yes, as a diuretic it can help to leach excessive, unbound iron in your blood.  But as a diuretic, it not only leaches unbound iron, which is a healthy function particularly in men over 40, but it also leaches vitamins B, C, and others.  If one is a regular coffee drinker, it is important to take magnesium, for coffee hardens blood vessels; the magnesium helps to relax them.  So coffee can block the metabolism of certain foods and vitamins.  Coffee is a chelator.  So if someone wants to rid themselves of excess unbound iron, coffee is not a bad way to go.  But know, too, that you'll be interfering with nutrient absorption from foods and vitamins.  

Health experts warned people should not start drinking coffee, or increasing their intake, for medical reasons. They also warned too much coffee for women during pregnancy could be harmful.

Personally, I don't trust all of the government-sponsored health organizations, like JAMA or NCI, the American Cancer Society, and others.  It's always better to go with folks who are immersed in health supplements and very specific, highly targeted nutritional compounds to treat specific conditions.  You can do your own reading and should.  Your productive life is at stake.  Plus, there is so little accountability from doctors, so their incentive to do a good, professional job.  Take your health into your own hands.  

HEALTH BENEFITS

Researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) used data from people taking part in a genetic study called the U.K. Biobank. The participants of that study volunteered to give blood and answer detailed health and lifestyle questions.

For the latest study, published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s JAMA Internal Medicine, NCI researchers analyzed information provided by approximately 500,000 people, who answered questions about coffee consumption, smoking and drinking habits, medical history and more. 

If you're going to drink coffee, you'll need to take nutritional supplements, all of them--A, B, C, D, E, and minerals like zinc, magnesium, and a little calcium.  The reason is that coffee leaches nutrients, so be forewarned.  Bill Sardi explains this process:  

The problem of thiamin deficiency may be traced to another daily practice, the consumption of coffee, tea or beer. Many millions of people consume coffee or tea at the same time they take their morning multivitamin. What's the problem with tea or coffee? They contain tannins (bitter parts) that alter vitamin B1 and render it useless. Sulfite preservatives, as found in wine, are another antagonist to B1. Alcohol also interferes with B1 absorption. In fact, about 30-80% of alcohol users have low circulating levels of B1. The lesson here is not to take vitamin B1 pills with coffee, tea or alcohol. 

Another author, SFGate, argues the same point. 

Coffee, tea, cola and other caffeine-containing drinks and foods have a mildly diuretic effect on your body. Moderate consumption of caffeine should present no problem for people with well-balanced diets that supply all the nutrients their bodies need to function properly. However, because B vitamins are water soluble and are flushed out of the body through excretion, heavy caffeine users may need to supplement with B-complex vitamins to compensate for nutrients lost through diuresis. Naturopathic doctor Linda Page, author of “Healthy Healing,” says excessive caffeine consumption hits your body’s stores of thiamine particularly hard. 

Preceding those remarks, the SFGate author explains that 

B vitamins play a key role in converting the foods you eat into energy, but unhealthy diet choices, too much stress and certain drugs can rob you of their vital benefits. Although they are available in wide array of animal- and plant-based foods, B vitamins are water soluble and cannot be stored in body tissue. As a consequence, you must renew your supply each day and avoid the forces that can rapidly deplete them from your body. 

A poor diet AND caffeine strip your body of these important nutrients.  So you'll want to ask yourself, how can coffee, a diuretic that leaches key nutrients from your body also extend life?