
Up to 25 cups of coffee a day still safe for heart health, study says - LinuxBender
https://lite.cnn.io/en/article/h_6decc22b30997e1b62c2b80c45a2a828
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mykowebhn
When we parametrize complex systems in studies such as this, I feel we tend to
lose the forest for the trees.

Okay, so maybe 25 cups of coffee a day won't destroy my heart.

But this is what happens when I have 5 cups of coffee a day:

1) I get jumpy and I feel anxious. If I drink too much I start to feel what I
can only describe as existential dread (I know it's weird).

2) I can't hold on to things because my hands are shaking.

3) I don't sleep as well at night, even if I don't drink any coffee after
12pm.

4) My lymph nodes start to swell. (This last one was really weird for me when
I found out that it was caffeine that was causing the lumps in my breast. I'm
pretty sure it's the caffeine since both times I had the lumps I quit coffee
cold-turkey and the lumps disappeared.)

I now limit myself to two cups of coffee per day. If I'm feeling indulgent I
may have a third cup, but that's not daily.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
I think the point here is that people with heart disease needn't worry too
much about coffee/caffeine intake. Heart disease affects a large part of the
population and even among those who are not effected heart health is still
something to be conscious of, especially in middle and old age.

~~~
cptskippy
Agreed, they're not condoning or advocating for high consumption. They're
simply establishing that even when drinking absurd amounts of coffee you're
not at increased risk, therefore it is ok to drink coffee.

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pessimizer
Maybe one day we'll reach the final headline:

Coffee Drinking Irrelevant To Heart Health, Unsure Why We Were Always Writing
About The Health Effects Of Coffee Or Why We Repeatedly Rotated Through Every
Possible Position On What They May Or May Not Have Been

------
112233
Having not drunk an ANSI cup of ISO coffee, what is the approximate amount
being discussed? A pack a day (of ground beans)? How many GreatBrittan cups
are in, e.g. a typical Swedes' coffee?

~~~
arketyp
I would guess 25 cups translates to an excessive amount anywhere in the world.

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kup0
25 cups of coffee in a day sure seems like an unhealthy amount of caffeine.

it seems the only factor they were checking for (?) was arterial stiffness? if
you're arteries aren't stiff but you're hyped and anxious out of this world
and have a very elevated heart rate... not sure the stiffness is what matters
anymore

1 cup typical drip coffee = ~70-120mg caffeine

25 cups = ~1750-3000mg caffeine

Examine ([https://examine.com/nutrition/caffeine-
consumption/](https://examine.com/nutrition/caffeine-consumption/)) recommends
up to 400mg/day as safe for healthy adults as in "most healthy people won't
experience side effects at this level". It seems like 1000mg is the
"beginning" of toxicity for a healthy person. Of course, half-life and time
between consumption of different sources makes a difference too.

But 1500, 2000+ in a day? Phew, maybe I'm overly cautious but that just seems
unwise for anyone

~~~
syn0byte
British study. We can infer instant coffee was the main preparation recorded
in the study, which has a lower caffeine content than fresh brewed.

~70-120mg look like drip brew numbers. Instant tends to run from 30-50mg.

25 cups of instant == ~750-1250mg

~~~
kup0
Good point, hadn't considered that, which does make a significant difference.

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TheRealPomax
This article does not mention "mg", "milligram", or even just the word
"caffeine", not links out to the actual research. So whoever upvoted this to
the front page: shame on you. We can be more judicial than that.

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retrac98
I quit caffeine altogether a while ago, and it's made a huge difference to my
quality of life and work.

When I wake up, I'm actually awake. When I go to bed, I'm actually sleepy. I
don't wake up several times during the night anymore, and I'm not falling
sleep mid-afternoon ever day.

~~~
deminature
I've had some brief breaks recently, and abstaining leads to actually feeling
tired around bedtime, falling asleep in a few minutes and waking up feeling
very refreshed. I'd recommend every regular caffeine user give it a try.

------
jonheller
I drank five to six cups a day, and felt like I desperately needed it, and
scoffed at anyone who suggested I try getting by with less.

At some point I stumbled on an article about the adenosine receptors in your
brain will actually compensate for this much caffeine by just growing more of
them. I also read that you can actually "kill" these extra receptors by going
cold turkey for a week.

So I did it, and it sucked (the second and third days were the worst). But
that was a year ago and I now get an equal if not better effect from two cups
a coffee each day.

~~~
joncrane
I didn't have to go cold turkey; I simply stopped drinking as much and my
receptors managed.

The funny thing is, the craving for coffee when I'm at work is when I'm
stressed out and want control over something. Well, coffee has a very neat
little cause-effect system that would give me something to change reliably.

The problem is, I don't even particularly like the effects of that second or
third cup of coffee; I just wanted the control to change my state of mind.

I'm not perfect and I still do reach for that 2nd or 3rd cup sometimes but by
realizing I'm a better coworker with just the one first thing in the morning
helps a lot.

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arandr0x
> Although some participants in the study drank 25 cups a day, the average
> intake among the highest coffee consumption group was five cups a day

There's an obvious sampling bias, where if Joyful Joe is happily guzzling his
25 cups a day, he's probably not fighting weird heartbeats and trouble
breathing the whole time, whereas Jittery Jim has one cup and talks the ears
off his local beleaguered 7-11 worker and has to be dragged out by security
only to spend the night awake in bed chewing every loose bit and bob off his
own fingers.

Also, IIRC when people say people with heart conditions shouldn't drink coffee
they mean "because stimulant overdoses screw up the heart's electrical rhythms
and can turn not-so-good oopsies into fatal oopsies" and not "because you'll
have a heart attack in 50 years". Heart attacks in 50 years are, however, a
good reason to keep away from the delicious cookies you are probably
disappearing into your hungry feeding tube washed down with a milk-and-sugar
mixture sold at a huge markup because it contains 0.5g of plant material
painstakingly harvested by faraway children, but definitely not 25 times a
day, because no one's that rich.

> The research also showed that moderate and heavy coffee drinkers were most
> likely to be male, smoke and consume alcohol regularly

Oh, well, they're dying of heart disease either way, might as well have fun
doing it.

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reallydude
"Health" here is a soft term to mean "won't kill you quickly or effect your
tissue for a long time".

Talking about the effect of healthy hearts obscures the effects. I am in stage
2 heart failure (as I have been for a long time). I cannot drink coffee, as it
aggravates the tissue.

The study can say whatever it wants about coffee (without caffeine), but the
effect of 100mg of caffeine on the heart is detrimental. That dread is the
same as many heart-attack-precursor feelings (also documented in EMT
training), that racing heart rate is aggravation of the left atrium, that
shaking is the fight-or-flight adrenaline (which is what makes us feel good).
This looks like a proletariat study. "Sure you can drink as much coffee as you
want, as long as you feel good about producing. It's fine until it isn't."

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SimeVidas
I love coffee but I feel three per day is pushing it. Do people really drink
much more than that?

~~~
butteroverflow
I drink about a couple of liters per day, sometimes less, depending on the
mood. I think I have no caffeine sensitivity at all, since I have normal BP,
no sleep problems, and am able to stop drinking all caffeinated beverages for
a few weeks without any (obvious) problems (did it several times after getting
tired of the taste).

All these personal anecdotes ( _when I stopped drinking coffee, my wife
returned to me, and I won in Powerball!_ ) sound very strange to me.

~~~
arandr0x
People greatly enjoy feeling like they made a worthwhile sacrifice and giving
up coffee is an easier achievement than running a half-marathon (though that
one is also a popular cause of returning wives and Powerball wins).

Anyway, I'm like you, and actually once said "I have no caffeine sensitivity
LIKE AT ALL", and then I cut down from "last coffee before dawn" to "around
1.5L" and the amount of psychological side effects I stopped having did change
my life (no Powerball involved). At the time, of course, I would have called
such side effects "that's just me". So, mileage varying. And some people are
super sensitive to that somewhat racing adrenaline feeling, even though it is
not actually dangerous.

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mattferderer
I'm curious if this was done with filtered drip coffee vs espresso. I'm a bit
ignorant on this subject but I've read some arguments that drip coffee is
filtered & therefore may be better for your heart as it filters out certain
elements.

I don't have a reference on this, purely looking to learn more about the
differences.

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cs702
I almost spit out my coffee upon reading "25 cups of coffee a day" \-- wait,
what!?

Then I read the OP... and yes, it turns out there are people who routinely
drink that much coffee in the UK.

Wow.

Can you imagine what one's body would feel like after ingesting 25 -- _twenty
five_ \-- cups of coffee in a 24-hour period?[a]

[a] Assumes zero hours of sleep per day.

~~~
kurthr
Cutting back to single digits is the hardest part!

My company had a row of 3 automated espresso machines so I timed the
dispensing delay (which happened to be almost exactly the grind time) so that
I could pipeline the process using all of them. People were moderately
horrified as I filled my coffee cup with a hexa-shot of espresso... but why
waste time hanging around the water cooler when you can vibrate in front of
your computer?

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radar
Last time I looked to an article for caffeine advice it said 600mg per day was
the number to not go over.

Common caffeine contents: Double Espresso ~100mg Starbucks small coffee ~200mg

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romellem
I tried to find the original source for this, but this is all I could find:
[https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-
arc...](https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-
archive/2019/june/coffee-not-as-bad-for-heart-and-circulatory-system-as-
previously-thought)

It doesn't go into too much detail on the research.

------
hu3
This article is plastered all over the web with similar title and content
wording as if it was copy-pasted and slightly edited numerous times. Sadly no
article links.

Eventually I found this PDF:
[https://heart.bmj.com/content/heartjnl/105/Suppl_6/A8.2.full...](https://heart.bmj.com/content/heartjnl/105/Suppl_6/A8.2.full.pdf)

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teilo
>The research also showed that moderate and heavy coffee drinkers were most
likely to be male, smoke and consume alcohol regularly.

So this shows an obvious problem with the study. They did not rule out co-
factors. If the moderate to heavy coffee drinkers are also smoke and consume
alcohol regularly, then this already puts them at a higher risk for heart
disease, and likely completely dwarfs any effect of caffeine.

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SonsOfThunder
> even those who drank up to 25 cups a day were no more likely to experience
> stiffening of the arteries than someone drinking less than a cup a day.

Stiffening of the arteries was not what the doctor at the emergency room
mentioned when he told me that I needed to reduce my caffeine intake.

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danmg
This was a longitudinal study that which controlled for blood pressure. What
about people for whom habitual heavy coffee consumption causes high blood
pressure? The study just looked at MRI heart scans. This sort of interaction
won't show up in that setting.

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resoluteteeth
There's also the acrylamide, though. (I wonder how much we should really worry
about it?)

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homero
Forget the cups, what's the milligrams? Cups can vary by hundreds.

~~~
vectorEQ
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup_(unit)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup_\(unit\))

~~~
jlg23
The comment was about caffeine content, which varies wildly depending on bean,
roast, brewing method....

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lazyjones
It's safe for the heart because the stomach will kill us first?

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terrycody
this is simply not truth, at least to me. I tried couple of coffees around a
week and then suddenly my heart went to nearly broken. For most of people, I
guess too much coffee will do more harm to heart than good.

That's why I always say Study and Research is an ongoing process which people
tend to understand the universe, and it maybe wrong and wrong again, until u
finally veiled the final secret.

------
RappingBoomer
I don't believe many studies these days....industry lobbyists carry scientists
around in their pockets like so many nickels and dimes...

~~~
Ancalagon
This is so sad, but unfortunately so true :(

And I really have no idea how to solve it without an effective
replication/peer-review process, which is currently not popular for scientists
trying to make a name for themselves.

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marsrover
Looks like I’ve been cutting myself off at 400mg caffeine daily for no reason.
Good to hear, I’ll start drinking more.

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zxv
I wonder why they didn't compare results for those that don't drink coffee at
all?

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jhayward
I don't have any links to hand but I'm fairly darn certain that arrhythmias
start showing up way before anyone gets to 25 cups per day, not to mention
fluid balance/kidney issues, which can lead to congestive heart failure.

TLDR; arterial stiffness is only one measure of "heart health".

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tomatotomato37
Two things:

1\. I have the feeling both this study and the ones it is trying to contradict
are not reproducible, like 99% of other health food type studies

2\. Your kidneys are probably going to be the bigger sufferers in this
scenario

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idlewords
But it's that 26th cup that puts me in the zone!

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scotty79
I get dizzy from drinking two cups.

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knicholes
I've only drank coffee a total of probably six times in my life. I seem to be
getting by just fine without it.

~~~
saagarjha
It’s a great performance enhancer if you take it rarely enough, and it’s
entirely legal to use at academic competitions :)

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droithomme
So, those of us at 26 need to cut back a bit.

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Para2016
Self reported survey without a dose of caffeine. This is less than useless

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vectorEQ
sure, pack of cigs a day u can also become 100+ years old.

don't forget about the impact on your mental processes and other effects these
substances have on you though. they are arguably much worse than cutting off a
few of your life years...

i used to drink loads of coffee. now i only drink it on occasion, and really
it's helped my attention become a lot more stable. caffeine and other
substances have varying levels of effect on people. for me it's pretty
intense, but for the person next to me, they feel nothing of it.

long story short: listen to your own mind and body when it comes to your diet.
it will tell you what is good and bad if you listen carefully. if you don't
listen, perhaps it will become ill as a form of yelling at you to get your
attention... ;D

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
> Professor Metin Avkiran, associate medical director at the British Heart
> Foundation, said in a press release: "There are several conflicting studies
> saying different things about coffee, and it can be difficult to filter what
> we should believe and what we shouldn't. This research will hopefully put
> some of the media reports in perspective, as it rules out one of the
> potential detrimental effects of coffee on our arteries."

They aren't saying that drinking coffee doesn't have problems, all they are
saying is that it doesn't appear to affect the arteries. They aren't trying to
provide an anecdote about simple living, it's testing a hypothesis.

