Tea and Coffee May Be Linked To Lower Risk of Stroke and Dementia, Study Finds (theguardian.com) 62
Drinking coffee or tea may be linked with a lower risk of stroke and dementia, according to the largest study of its kind. The Guardian reports: Strokes cause 10% of deaths globally, while dementia is one of the world's biggest health challenges -- 130 million are expected to be living with it by 2050. In the research, 365,000 people aged between 50 and 74 were followed for more than a decade. At the start the participants, who were involved in the UK Biobank study, self-reported how much coffee and tea they drank. Over the research period, 5,079 of them developed dementia and 10,053 went on to have at least one stroke.
Researchers found that people who drank two to three cups of coffee or three to five cups of tea a day, or a combination of four to six cups of coffee and tea, had the lowest risk of stroke or dementia. Those who drank two to three cups of coffee and two to three cups of tea daily had a 32% lower risk of stroke. These people had a 28% lower risk of dementia compared with those who did not drink tea or coffee. The research, by Yuan Zhang and colleagues from Tianjin Medical University, China, suggests drinking coffee alone or in combination with tea is also linked with lower risk of post-stroke dementia. "[W]hat generally happened is that the risk of stroke or dementia was lower in people who drank reasonably small amounts of coffee or tea compared to those who drank none at all, but that after a certain level of consumption, the risk started to increase again until it became higher than the risk to people who drank none," said professor Kevin McConway, an emeritus professor of applied statistics at the Open University who was not involved in the study.
"Once the coffee consumption got up to seven or eight cups a day, the stroke risk was greater than for people who drank no coffee, and quite a lot higher than for those who drank two or three cups a day."
The study has been published in the journal PLOS Medicine.
Researchers found that people who drank two to three cups of coffee or three to five cups of tea a day, or a combination of four to six cups of coffee and tea, had the lowest risk of stroke or dementia. Those who drank two to three cups of coffee and two to three cups of tea daily had a 32% lower risk of stroke. These people had a 28% lower risk of dementia compared with those who did not drink tea or coffee. The research, by Yuan Zhang and colleagues from Tianjin Medical University, China, suggests drinking coffee alone or in combination with tea is also linked with lower risk of post-stroke dementia. "[W]hat generally happened is that the risk of stroke or dementia was lower in people who drank reasonably small amounts of coffee or tea compared to those who drank none at all, but that after a certain level of consumption, the risk started to increase again until it became higher than the risk to people who drank none," said professor Kevin McConway, an emeritus professor of applied statistics at the Open University who was not involved in the study.
"Once the coffee consumption got up to seven or eight cups a day, the stroke risk was greater than for people who drank no coffee, and quite a lot higher than for those who drank two or three cups a day."
The study has been published in the journal PLOS Medicine.
Noise (Score:5, Insightful)
In a self-reported study of dietary habits over a decade, a 30% difference is just noise. There are too many factors to control for to get that kind of resolution of the signal.
Re: (Score:1)
And yet, a 0.01% decrease in the death rate of vaccinated from non-vaccinated
This is so wrong I'm tempted to say you don't know how to count. At very least, take a statistics class.
Why do you think those numbers are being calculated in the same way? It isn't comparable.
Re: (Score:2)
In a self-reported study of dietary habits over a decade, a 30% difference is just noise. There are too many factors to control for to get that kind of resolution of the signal.
I don't think so. You don't have to control for any other factors because they'll balance out. (Even if the other factors are correlated with tea and coffee consumption? well, this study was a correlation study in any case - hence the headline phrase "linked to" and the researcher quote "associated with"). I think that 30% is a very clear signal.
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I'll bet you people who don't drink any tea or coffee skew poorer than those who do, because tea and coffee cost money and/or time. You'll certainly find very few homeless people drinking coffee, and lots of them dying young. That's a rather significant factor they better have controlled for if they want the link to have any meaning.
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Studies also show that people who have alcoholic drinks ~1/day also live the longest. Drinking anything to excess - whether tea, coffee, or alcohol - is a sign there's something off with a person's lifestyle. Similarly, think about the types of people who don't drink *any* alcohol: like you said, those too poor to afford it, and also those people who abstain (coffee, alcohol) because of "air quote" health reasons "/air quote" ... again, a group with something wrong with their lifestyle choices.
(Disclaimer
Re: (Score:3)
I don't think so. You don't have to control for any other factors because they'll balance out
For example, consider why someone might be drinking 7 cups of coffee. Is it because they have a lot of stress in their life? In that case, the same thing is causing the coffee drinking and the strokes.
I think that 30% is a very clear signal.
Based on what? Gut instinct?
Re: Noise (Score:2)
Re: Noise (Score:2)
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* spaces added so it will print
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You can either specifically point out the flaws in the research or stfu.
I did, you nincompoop. I said they didn't adjust for stress. Furthermore this fallacy may apply [xkcd.com]. Moreover, they made adjustments for a lot of factors, and each of those adjustments has its own margin of error. It's not clear from their description that they correctly carried over the margin of error into the final calculation, it appears they didn't. If I were peer reviewing this paper, I would ask them to clarify that point.
Re:Noise (Score:5, Insightful)
And for those that didn't drink tea or coffee - what did they drink instead? As that probably has a significant impact too.
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Indeed, adjusting for all the other things people could have eaten is probably impossible.
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when someone is nursing a coffee to stay focused
its not the coffee its that they can put something in their mouth every 5 seconds
Cars and Coffee ? (Score:2)
What about Cars and Coffee ?
Re: (Score:2)
It's a little more than you expect [wikipedia.org].
Re:Noise (Score:5, Insightful)
If you actually read the study (I know I know I bang on about this, but its important!), you'd know that the P value is 0.01.
So as far as significance goes its not "just noise" when the demonstrable uncertainty is under 1%. In terms of other factors, they've used a Cox proportional hazards model with is a statistically sound method of factoring a lot of confounding. variables.
This is a mathematically sound result, and all the workings are in the paper if you want to check for yourself.
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If you actually read the study (I know I know I bang on about this, but its important!), you'd know that the P value is 0.01.
So what? Plenty of wrong results show up with P value < 0.01.
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No, it is all true. NOT drinking coffee is a form of dementia after all ;)
Finally some good news! (Score:5, Funny)
Hopefully it’s enough to offset the lack of sleep and alcohol consumption.
Stroke (Score:2)
What kind of stroke? I heard pr0n can cause strokes too.
Re: Stroke (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
What kind of stroke? I heard pr0n can cause strokes too.
There is a joke in there somewhere. Should we expose it?
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Re: Stroke (Score:2)
Somewhat less politicized link for the article (Score:1, Informative)
https://www.sciencedaily.com/r... [sciencedaily.com]
This site is meant for news, the Guardian is shameless propaganda, and since this story is science there's absolutely no reason to link to a rag like that.
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
This site is meant for news, the Guardian is shameless propaganda
Whoa, wut? In case you haven't noticed, this site is meant for communist propaganda these days. Universal Basic Income FTW!
--
We still have to defeat faucism.
Two or three cups a day (Score:2)
I'll just get a bigger cup.
Re: (Score:2)
Those are called traveler mugs.
You'll need the equivalent size to hold the pee.
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Why, does the study say that also prevents strokes and dementia?
Re:Two or three cups a day (Score:4, Insightful)
It would kind of been nice if they had defined what they considered a "cup." Do a little reading on "Why Is A Cup Of Coffee Only 6 Ounces Instead of 8?"
I find it interesting to see people drinking a "cup" of coffee in old movies and the cup looks like it was made for a slightly bigger espresso. If you are bored, you can actually find pictures of how cups of coffee have gotten bigger over time.
Also, it would have been nice if they broke that down into drinking it black or if someone added 32 grams of sugar to their drink of choice. I really have objections to how healthy coffee is, if you are going to put half a cup of sugar in it.
One of my theories on why they see these health benefits is because someone drinking 3 - 4 cups of coffee a day may not be drinking any soft drinks. The health benefit may not be what they are drinking at all, but what they are not drinking.
I drink about 2.5 actual 8 oz cups of coffee a day (black), but the first cup is a pretty stout cup of coffee from fresh ground beans, and the second cup is run of the mill decaf, because I like sleeping at night.
I drink some carbonated water, but I would be hard pressed to tell you the last actual soft drink I had. It's probably been pretty close to a decade ago.
Re:Two or three cups a day (Score:4, Insightful)
The size of the cups probably varies considerably, but it's not necessarily the important factor anyway. Most people make tea with teabags nowadays, so the amount of the anti-oxidants etc. extracted depends at least as much on how long they leave the bag in as how much water they put on top. As for coffee: either it's instant, so again it depends on how many granules they use; or it's from a system which uses a measured quantity of coffee, and the last water flow through in a lungo will extract less than the first.
Re: Two or three cups a day (Score:2)
Re:Two or three cups a day (Score:4, Informative)
A six-year study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, examined the intake of sugary drinks and fruit juice in 13,440 adults in the US over the age of 45 years.
Those who drank a 12 oz (350 ml) glass of juice daily had a 24% greater chance of dying during the study, compared to an 11% rise among those drinking any sugary soft drink daily.
“These findings suggest that consumption of sugary beverages, including fruit juices, is associated with all-cause mortality. Well-powered and longer-term studies are needed to inform their association with CHD mortality risk,” the study concluded.
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I fill my Mr. Coffee up to the "6 cup" line each day. I can get 2 mugs and some change out of it. I think it uses 5 fl. ounce / 150 ml as a "cup". A mug is more like 275 to 350 ml.
Bullshit (Score:2)
Caffeine is good for you.
Caffiene is bad for you.
The only thing known about caffiene in medical science is that it is a mechanism to produce pseudoscientific write-only articles meant to pad a CV.
Other coffee fact... (Score:3)
People who avoid coffee for health concerns are found to have significantly less fun by any measure applied.
The relationship has not been demonstrated to be causal - just heavily correlated.
Brought to you drug co (Score:2)
Lower risk of dementia? (Score:5, Funny)
ABABABAB (Score:3, Insightful)
I've said this many times and it keeps proving true. Studies seem to alternate in saying coffee is good, then bad, then good, then bad, etc etc etc and the pattern continues after being noticed roughly 20 years ago. Average it out: it's neutral if you don't have too much.
So, if you wish, enjoy a hot cup of joe.
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I've said this many times and it keeps proving true. Studies seem to alternate in saying coffee is good, then bad, then good, then bad, etc etc etc
You have to be careful because"good" and "bad" are not precise. For example, it's possible a substance reduces the risk of dementia but increases the risk of Turf Toe. So studies saying it's "good" and "bad" could both be 100% accurate, you need more detail to accurately interpret.
That said, This graph is relevant [sciencealert.com].
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That said, This graph is relevant [sciencealert.com].
Looking at that graph carefully, you can see that cancer risk is inversely correlated with alphabetical order.
Beef, butter = bad
Wine, tomatoes = good
The alphabetical correlation matches for every item listed.
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You found the true causation! The correlation is real.
Re: ABABABAB (Score:2)
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No. Journalists alternate in implying that.
Studies like these generally only find correlations, which is why the words used to describe the relation are things like 'linked to' and 'associated with'. Although a lot of news articles do actually use these same words and strictly speaking do not state that one causes the other, they often do very little to remind the reader that correlation does not equal causation and that there is no basis to conclude that one indeed causes the other.
Scientific papers are mu
or maybe (Score:2)
Sleep (Score:3)
If I drank this much caffeine everyday, I would have trouble sleeping. I thought dementia was supposed to be more prevalent in people who have had insufficient sleep consistently over their life time? Iâ(TM)m sure there are others like me who restrict caffeine intake for the same reason. I.e. poor sleepers who are more at risk of dementia donâ(TM)t drink so much coffee and tea, skewing the dementia numbers. So perhaps the summary is wrong and somebody noticed a correlation and missed the causation.
Cup = ? (not very scientific) (Score:2)
The article does not mention what a "cup" is.
People were asked to self-report, so "a cup" could be anything, ranging from 80ml (small coffee) all the way up to 400ml (large tea).
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My "cup" is what was once called "a pint" (568 ml or 20 fluid ounces).
I used to drink more than 8 "cups" per day (range 8 to 12). Now I restrict myself to two "cups" per day -- once in the morning when I awake and one just before bed to promote efficient sleep.
My coffee dripping contraption makes exactly one "cup" at a time.
Avoid extremes, live longer ... (Score:3)
Do things in moderation and you'll live healthier.
Or is it: people genetically disposed to moderation, live healthier?
C vs. C (Score:2)
Correlation, causation, who cares?
Maybe people who want to do more shit are more likely to consume caffeine and people who do shit are less likely to have health problems?
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Someone who wants to know if drinking more coffee will make them healthier. If it's correlation without causation, it won't.
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Yeah, that's the point. This information is worthless to those people. Glad you got it.
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Possibly it's good to rest and relax at regular intervals.
Absolutely True (Score:2)
I concur completely. A big cup of coffee in the morning, a big cup of black/green tea in the afternoon, and 2l of red wine in the evening. Live long and prosper! :)
Today, good (Score:2)
Re (Score:1)