Hiding in Plain Sight: Coffee and Death

What if you were told that your local supermarket stocked an item that could lower the risk of dying prematurely?

Cost: $4.30 per pound.

Yeah, right.

A remarkable well-conducted study published this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association found just that. Coffee drinking was inversely associated with mortality.

The data was gathered from the UK Biobank, a population-based study using demographic and life-style profiles of 498,134 Brits between 2006 and 2016. They ranged in age from 38–73. 54% were female and 78% were coffee drinkers. Over the 10 years of follow-up, 14,225 deaths occurred.

Numerous studies have demonstrated the health benefits of coffee. Few of them address questions about dose effects such as how many cups or how much caffeine. They also leave you wondering whether the form of the coffee makes a difference, ground, instant or decaf.

This study did that and more.

The investigators examined the potential effect of differences in caffeine metabolism. Genetic testing allowed an assessment of whether rapid metabolizers of caffeine, rendering lower blood caffeine levels, lessened the therapeutic effect of coffee consumption.

This was not the case, suggesting that caffeine is not the magic ingredient in coffee that provides a protective effect.

As importantly, the benefits of coffee consumption appeared to increase up to 6–7 cups per day and persisted with 8 or more cups per day. Similar results were observed for instant, ground and decaf.

One medical commentator has questioned the premise that it is the coffee that confers a health benefit because caffeine is the only documented biologically active agent in coffee and decaf proved equally potent. He suggests that perhaps there is something about coffee drinkers that produced these findings.

This is typical Western medicine hubris, assuming we have cracked nature’s code by identifying one active ingredient in a plant. Coffee contains a multitude of powerful bioflavonoids that we are just beginning to appreciate as powerful therapeutic agents.

The distinguished British scientist, Haldane famously said there are four stages to the acceptance of a new theory.

1. This is worthless nonsense.

2. This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view.

3. This is true but quite unimportant.

4. I always said so.