From the wikipedia page, it seems that coffee has a lot of good long term medical benefits, with only a few long term side effects if consumed in moderation, meaning less than 4 cups a day.
This includes possible reduced risk of prostate cancer, Alzheimers, dementia, Parkinson’s disease, heart disease, diabetes, liver disease, cirrhosis, and gout.
It has also been taken off the list for a risk factor in heart disease, and acts as an antidepressant.
Caffeine is not the cause of all of these positive effects, because there are some that decaffeinated coffee also helps.
Risks include increased heart disease from non-paper brewed coffee, iron deficiency, and anxiety.
Because of this, I’m considering deliberately drinking coffee, despite not needing it in order to stay awake. Are there reasons not to that LWers know about? Or are there other substances that have similar effects?
Interestingly, if you go to the main wiki page on tea, it lists many benefits, including “significant protective effects of green tea against oral, pharyngeal, oesophageal, prostate, digestive, urinary tract, pancreatic, bladder, skin, lung, colon, breast, and liver cancers, and lower risk for cancer metastasis and recurrence.”
However, looking at the studies cited shows the ones they cite are in animals or in vitro.
If you look on the main page of Health effects of Tea, it says the FDA and Nation Cancer Institute say there are most likely no effects to reduce cancer, and the page doesn’t list any other major benefits. There are also many drawbacks listed on that page.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tea)
But, the FDA announcement they cite was in 2005, and I don’t know if there have been major important studies since then.
A quick google scholar search doesn’t appear to show studies in humans, though I didn’t do a detailed enough search to say anything conclusive.
Bottom line, I’m not sure if tea is better, or even beneficial at all.
I think a better search would’ve helped. For example, doing a date limit to 2007 or so and searching tea human longevity OR lifespan OR mortality pulls up 2 correlational studies (what, you were expecting large RCTs? dream on). You could probably get even better results doing a human-limited search on Pubmed.
You might also take into account any possible downside from becoming caffeine dependent, ie unable to function optimally without it once you’ve gained tolerance. Caffeine dependence goes away again pretty quickly if you abstain though, so you can undo that if you don’t like it.
Are you sure you trust the research in question? Without reading the literature at all, it seems to me like there may be a lot of confounding factors (e.g. maybe richer people drink more coffee). I’m especially sceptical because you list a large range of dubiously related diseases (so, richness would affect them all, but caffeine/whatever affecting them all is less expected). Beyond that, you also need to check the magnitude of effects—if it’s a minuscule change, it may well not be worth bothering with (and is even more likely to be because of noise).
So, yeah, very sceptical that these effects are real and worth acting on, although I suppose they could be. In theory.
From the wikipedia page, it seems that coffee has a lot of good long term medical benefits, with only a few long term side effects if consumed in moderation, meaning less than 4 cups a day.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_caffeine#Long-term_effects)
This includes possible reduced risk of prostate cancer, Alzheimers, dementia, Parkinson’s disease, heart disease, diabetes, liver disease, cirrhosis, and gout.
It has also been taken off the list for a risk factor in heart disease, and acts as an antidepressant.
Caffeine is not the cause of all of these positive effects, because there are some that decaffeinated coffee also helps.
Risks include increased heart disease from non-paper brewed coffee, iron deficiency, and anxiety.
Because of this, I’m considering deliberately drinking coffee, despite not needing it in order to stay awake. Are there reasons not to that LWers know about? Or are there other substances that have similar effects?
Have you considered tea? Seems to be cheaper and the health benefits seem equal or superior in my very casual overviews of the topic.
Green tea is hugely beneficial in that your coworkers are less likely to nick it.
Interestingly, if you go to the main wiki page on tea, it lists many benefits, including “significant protective effects of green tea against oral, pharyngeal, oesophageal, prostate, digestive, urinary tract, pancreatic, bladder, skin, lung, colon, breast, and liver cancers, and lower risk for cancer metastasis and recurrence.”
However, looking at the studies cited shows the ones they cite are in animals or in vitro.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea#Health_effects)
If you look on the main page of Health effects of Tea, it says the FDA and Nation Cancer Institute say there are most likely no effects to reduce cancer, and the page doesn’t list any other major benefits. There are also many drawbacks listed on that page. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tea)
But, the FDA announcement they cite was in 2005, and I don’t know if there have been major important studies since then.
A quick google scholar search doesn’t appear to show studies in humans, though I didn’t do a detailed enough search to say anything conclusive.
Bottom line, I’m not sure if tea is better, or even beneficial at all.
I think a better search would’ve helped. For example, doing a date limit to 2007 or so and searching
tea human longevity OR lifespan OR mortalitypulls up 2 correlational studies (what, you were expecting large RCTs? dream on). You could probably get even better results doing a human-limited search on Pubmed.Ahem.
(Mediocre, but it took me two minutes. I’m satisfied.)
You might also take into account any possible downside from becoming caffeine dependent, ie unable to function optimally without it once you’ve gained tolerance. Caffeine dependence goes away again pretty quickly if you abstain though, so you can undo that if you don’t like it.
Are you sure you trust the research in question? Without reading the literature at all, it seems to me like there may be a lot of confounding factors (e.g. maybe richer people drink more coffee). I’m especially sceptical because you list a large range of dubiously related diseases (so, richness would affect them all, but caffeine/whatever affecting them all is less expected). Beyond that, you also need to check the magnitude of effects—if it’s a minuscule change, it may well not be worth bothering with (and is even more likely to be because of noise).
So, yeah, very sceptical that these effects are real and worth acting on, although I suppose they could be. In theory.