Coffee. The ambrosia of mortals. An essential element to start the day... or to withstand its fury. For years, experts have published highly contradictory texts regarding the benefits of coffee, but the trend suggests it is good for us. The million-dollar question is “how good?” and that leads us to a study in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Its numbers suggest that coffee reduces the risk of mortality associated with digestive, circulatory, and cerebrovascular diseases, although the difference would not be that great, to say the least.
As I write this text, I'm processing my third cup of coffee... or fourth. Regardless of the weather or season, coffee cannot be missing. The amount of claims about it has been impressive, but if we look at the last ten or twelve years of specialized evaluations, coffee does us good. One of the most studied points is mortality. What kind of link exists between coffee consumption and certain potentially lethal conditions?
Health and Coffee Consumption
The Annals of Internal Medicine, which is run by the American College of Physicians, published a study involving more than half a million people under the EPIC program (European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition). These are people over 35 years old, distributed across ten European countries, who were asked to report their coffee consumption. The follow-up lasted 16.4 years, and 41,693 deaths were recorded.
When compared with people who do not drink coffee, the top quartile of consumers showed a decrease in all causes of mortality. The hazard ratio (hazard ratio or “HR”) is 0.88 for men and 0.93 for women. In essence, if the ratio exceeds 1, the frequency of deaths is higher. When it falls below 1, we speak of a lower incidence, but there is a detail: The confidence interval (“CI”) gives us a 95 percent probability that the hazard ratio in men lies between 0.82 and 0.95, while for women it ranges between 0.87 and 0.98. So it's not far from 1 after all.
The great exception in favor of coffee is found in digestive diseases. Coffee consumption suggests a ratio of 0.41 in men (CI 0.32 - 0.54), and 0.60 in women (CI 0.46 - 0.78). In cases of liver cancer, the ratio among men is 0.56 (CI 0.41 - 0.77), and when we look at women, there is a lower risk of circulatory and cerebrovascular diseases, but experts detected a positive association between coffee consumption and ovarian cancer (HR 1.31, CI 1.07 - 1.61).
In short, we are within what is “statistically significant”, although there are many factors to consider. It's not just coffee: Lifestyle plays its part. Consider a person who drinks coffee five times a week. Is it healthier if they prepare it at home, or if they take a twenty-minute walk (ten there and ten back) to drink a cup...?
