Supplement Doctor's Blog

Coffee is better than sex

Posted by Jose Antonio on Wed, Mar 31, 2010 @ 04:34 PM

Actually, nothing is better than sex. But hey, I got you to read this article.

Has your doctor told you to lay off the coffee? Well if he or she did, then clearly they’re dummies. Coffee is one of the best drinks for you! Drink more coffee and the risk of death from heart disease goes down. And besides, that caffeine fix in the morning is better than bad sex or a good donut.

Here’s the study: Coffee contains various compounds that have recently been reported to exert beneficial health effects. However, the conclusion of its relation with mortality has not yet been reached. In this study, we aimed to investigate the associations between coffee consumption and all-cause and cause-specific mortality in Japan. We included 37,742 participants (18,287 men and 19,455 women) aged 40-64 y without a history of cancer, myocardial infarction, or stroke at baseline in our analysis, based on the Miyagi Cohort Study initiated in 1990. The outcomes were mortality due to all causes, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and cancer. During the 10.3 y of follow-up, 2454 participants died, including 426 due to CVD and 724 due to cancer. In women, the multivariate hazard ratios (HR) (95% CI) for all-cause mortality in participants who drank coffee never, occasionally, 1-2 cups (150-300 mL)/d, and >/=3 cups/d were 1.00, 0.88 (0.73-1.06), 0.82 (0.66-1.02), and 0.75 (0.53-1.05), respectively (P-trend = 0.04). For CVD mortality in women, the multivariate HR (95% CI) were 1.00, 0.56 (0.36-0.86), 0.48 (0.29-0.80), and 0.45 (0.20-1.03), respectively (P-trend = 0.006). Of the specific CVD diseases, there was a strong inverse association between coffee consumption and mortality due to coronary heart disease (CHD) in women (P-trend = 0.02) but not in men. Death due to cancer was not associated with coffee consumption in either men or women, except for colorectal cancer in women. Our results suggest that coffee may have favorable effects on mortality due to all causes and to CVD, especially CHD, in women.

Reference:

J Nutr. 2010 Mar 24. [Epub ahead of print]

Coffee Consumption and Mortality Due to All Causes, Cardiovascular Disease, and Cancer in Japanese Women. Sugiyama K, Kuriyama S, Akhter M, Kakizaki M, Nakaya N, Ohmori-Matsuda K, Shimazu T, Nagai M, Sugawara Y, Hozawa A, Fukao A, Tsuji I. Division of Epidemiology, Department of Public Health and Forensic Medicine, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, 2-1 Seiryo-machi, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8575, Japan.