Consumption of coffee and tea and risk of developing stroke and dementia

https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1003830

by bryan0 • 5 years ago

139 136 5 years ago

journals.plos.org

DantesKite• 5 years ago

Sweet. Strokes terrify me. Supposedly ubiquinol and citrus bergamot help prevent them, but I haven't researched deeply enough to make up my mind about it.

I wonder what's the mechanism involved.

caf• 5 years ago

Go for Earl Grey then to get your bergamot and tea at the same time.

elevaet• 5 years ago

We found that drinking coffee and tea separately or in combination were associated with lower risk of stroke and dementia. Intake of coffee alone or in combination with tea was associated with lower risk of poststroke dementia.

Beyond this, there are so many other health benefits to reasonable coffee/tea drinking. It's one of the few addictions that probably ends up being good for you.

popotamonga• 5 years ago

But which tea? There are thousands cant believe they are all the same.

mirekrusin2• 5 years ago

Coffee + L-Theanin.

estaseuropano• 5 years ago

There is a single tea plant, grown in different regions, harvested at different times, and processed in different ways to white, black, green, matcha and pu err tea. I would presume there is no massive difference from the health side as they are largely the same. If in doubt get an organic green tea as green tea best preserves vitamines.

Then there are infusions of fruits, leaves, etc which are not strictly tea.

And there are the above teas with other plants or oils mixed in (e.g. jasmine flower, bergamotte, ...). As long as you don't add much sugar I doubt these have much different impact unless these are plants with known effects of their own (ginseng, ginko, lemongrass, ...).

rnestler• 5 years ago

While there are thousands of "herbal teas", just "tea" refers to beverages made with the Camellia sinensis plant. See https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea

mschild2• 5 years ago

Going by statistics, I'd arguee black, herbal, and green, with black tea leading with quite a margin. [0]

[0] https://brandongaille.com/20-uk-tea-industry-statistics-and-...

1penny42cents2• 5 years ago

It's one of the few addictions that probably ends up being good for you

I thought that for a long time, until I realized that afternoon caffeine was correlated with my inability to fall asleep at night. Cutting coffee (even dark chocolate) after lunch has greatly improved my sleep quality. Still love it in the mornings though.

sva_• 5 years ago

I'd usually aim for drinking the first coffee/tea about 1-2 hours after waking (it is important to wake up by circadian rhythms to get the best effect) and drink the last beverage around 2pm, or at latest 3pm.

MrYellowP• 5 years ago

until I realized that afternoon caffeine was correlated with my inability to fall asleep at night.

That sounds like it wasn't obvious to you from the start.

You see me flabbergasted. How is that even possible?

romanshrompsky• 5 years ago

This title alone almost gave me a heart attack. Happy to keep drinking tea.

gigglesupstairs• 5 years ago

Yeah the title was loaded without being actually loaded. Haha

quickthrower22• 5 years ago

Ok regardless of conclusion life is too short to give up grinding beans, extracting coffee from them and drinking it. Glad it’s “good for you” in this study.

lostlogin• 5 years ago

Love him or hate him, it’s hard to disagree with John Gruber’s proposed keys to success:

1) Fussy coffee

2) A clicky keyboard

3) Over carbonated water

(Possibly poorly remembered).

LegitShady2• 5 years ago

don't want to give up grinding beans, but I want to find an alternative to jamaican blue mountain so that my wallet stops complaining. Everything else seems hyper sour and acidic by comparison.

denton-scratch2• 5 years ago

I paid £24 for 250g of Blue Mountain a few weeks ago. Unimpressed - it tasted like - er - coffee. I mean, it was like regular coffee, a bit smoother than usual.

So I've gone back to my touchstone brew: Harar Hyena (it's from the Harar region in Ethiopia; the "hyena" bit is because the town is famous for being infested with hyenas). It costs half as much. I was warned the first time I bought it that it's not to everyone's taste; well, it's certainly to mine. It's fruity and complex. I certainly wouldn't describe it as acidic.

I can't write tasting notes, I can't bear to be that pretentious; but The Spruce Eats says: "This flavor is often described as fruity and winey with a mocha note, medium acidity, and a full body."

eurasiantiger• 5 years ago

I would take this study with a grain of salt. It relies on self-reporting.

lvturner• 5 years ago

Time for a link to James Hoffmann - "The Magic of Salt in Coffee"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PUWQQ-joKE

Maxion• 5 years ago

The issue with research and the internet can be boiled down to singular dimissive comments like this. You see them especially a lot on Reddit.

This is a prospective cohort study - it is not meant to cover all limitations. Every scientific study will have strength and weaknesses, an RCT won't ever have 350 000 participants. Studies with large sample sizes almost always have to resort to either self reporting or interviews in order to collect at least some of the data.

You're not meant to take an individual study's results as the truth - it's the overall body of research that's important. When you see the same or very similar results from studies with varying study designs from different populations done by different researchers with different methods the results become more credible.

Though this specific study is notable as the effect size is quite large, the bias from self reported coffee or tea intake would have to be quite large itself to remove it.

And with regards to coffee and tea consumption and research, this is a pretty well researched area already, and the general consenus is that consuming tea or coffee does have health benefits.

Rastonbury2• 5 years ago

Well said, especially your 2nd and 3rd lines. Saying "correlation =! causation" or similar adds nothing

malkia• 5 years ago

Obligatory Dave Grohl - FRESH POOOAATS - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhdCslFcKFU

baby2• 5 years ago

As someone with poor sensitivity to coffee, I’ve always wondered if these studies actually dismiss the possibility that people who drink coffee are people who can stand it, and as such have stronger hearts or something, and this it’s not a consequence of drinking coffee just a correlation.

siva7• 5 years ago

I wouldn’t be surprised if they haven’t. That would be the topic of another study.

DoreenMichele3• 5 years ago

That's actually a good thought.

I have a genetic disorder. A lot of my food preferences turn out to be "medicinal" so to speak for that condition.

tessierashpool• 5 years ago

coffee sensitivity is due to an enzyme difference, not anything cardiac-related. the enzymes in coffee-sensitive people break down caffeine more slowly, prolonging its effect.

bencollier49• 5 years ago

Can confirm - coffee sensitive. If I have a coffee at 11am, my heart rate will rise to 110 and stay there until I go to bed, before slowly declining overnight.

Discovered the gene thanks to consumer genetic testing, and the heart rate thing with a fitbit. I'm more careful these days.

bhy• 5 years ago

I read that some studies have shown even decaffeinated coffee have health benefits. It's not only because of the caffeine.

_Microft• 5 years ago

Or that it is that frequent coffee and tea drinkers have a higher liquid intake per day or that it’s a socio-economic thing and people who cannot afford these are more at risk, …

All the study claimed was an „association“, nothing more.

DoreenMichele3• 5 years ago

Or that it is that frequent coffee and tea drinkers have a higher liquid intake per day

That thought crossed my mind, actually.

tomrod• 5 years ago

I plan to read more to understand their robustness controls, instrumental variable or other control strategy, etc. for causal inference. This said, they do control for many of the factors one would expect. From their Covariates section:

Covariates
In the present study, the selection of covariates based on (1) demographic variables, including sex, age, ethnicity background, education level, and income; and (2) a priori knowledge of potential confounding factors associated with incident stroke and dementia [30,31]. Covariates were documented including sex, age, ethnicity (White, Asian or Asian British, Black or Black British, and Other ethnic group), qualification (college or university degree, Advanced [A] levels/Advanced Subsidiary [AS] levels or equivalent, Ordinary [O] levels/General Certificate of Secondary Education [GCSE] or equivalent, Certificate of Secondary Education [CSE] or equivalent, National Vocational Qualification [NVQ] or Higher National Diploma [HND] or Higher National Certificate [HNC] or equivalent, other professional qualifications, or none of the above), income (less than £18,000, 18,000 to 30,999, 31,000 to 51,999, 52,000 to 100,000, and greater than 100,000), BMI (<25, 25 to <30, 30 to <35, and ≥35 kg/m2), smoking status (never, former, and current), alcohol status (never, former, and current), physical activity (low, moderate, and high), consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, history of diabetes, history of coronary artery disease, high-density lipoprotein (HDL), low-density lipoprotein (LDL), and diet pattern (healthy and unhealthy, healthy diet was based on consumption of at least 4 of 7 dietary components: (1) fruits: ≥3 servings/day; (2) vegetables: ≥3 servings/day; (3) fish: ≥2 servings/week; (4) processed meats: ≤1 serving/week; (5) unprocessed red meats: ≤1.5 servings/week; (6) whole grains: ≥3 servings/day; (7) refined grains: ≤1.5 servings/day [32–35]) (S1 Table).
Information on cardiovascular arterial disease (CAD) was derived from medical records (ICD-10 codes I20 to I25). Diabetes was ascertained on the basis of medical records (ICD-10 codes E10 to E14), glycated hemoglobin ≥6.5%, and the use of antidiabetic drugs. Hypertension was defined as systolic blood pressure (SBP) ≥140 mm Hg or diastolic blood pressure (DBP) ≥90 mm Hg, use of antihypertension agents, or medical records (ICD-10 codes I10 to I13 and I15). Cancer was identified through linkage to the National Health Service (NHS) Central Register (ICD-10 codes C00 to C97).

joshvm• 5 years ago

This is a common concern in virtually all clinical studies and it's unlikely the researchers just ignored this. In principle these studies attempt to decorrelate confusing factors; from the abstract:

We used Cox proportional hazards models to estimate the associations between coffee/tea consumption and incident stroke and dementia, adjusting for sex, age, ethnicity, qualification, income, body mass index (BMI), physical activity, alcohol status, smoking status, diet pattern, consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, high-density lipoprotein (HDL), low-density lipoprotein (LDL), history of cancer, history of diabetes, history of cardiovascular arterial disease (CAD), and hypertension.

It's extremely difficult to do this in practice because people lie, there are other factors they might have missed and so on.

Rastonbury2• 5 years ago

They study states that is is controlled for income, along with a host of other confounding factors.

djmips2• 5 years ago

I think this is an interesting line of thinking. I was thinking along the same lines. I think it's probably the 'or something'. It's difficult to imagine what that would be exactly.

brigandish• 5 years ago

There are genetic variants associated with coffee consumption[1] so you're right, in a sense the groups are self selecting. It still could be the coffee and tea though, this kind of study could be the first step to looking deeper and finding out.

[1] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/genetic-var...

dehrmann2• 5 years ago

As others have mentioned, there's the metabolism bit, but as someone who's gone back and forth between decaf and regular, when you're not accustomed to caffeine, there's a bit of uncomfortablness that comes with the added energy. If I keep going and rebuild the tolerance, it goes way.

techsin101• 5 years ago

black tea with milk tastes better and easier on stomach

King-Aaron2• 5 years ago

Speed-read the title, spat out my coffee

Re-read the title and then the article conclusion, and slurped it back up off my desk

herodoturtle• 5 years ago

Hyperbole aside, I experienced the exact same sequence of events on this side ^_^

The conclusion, for those of you that are wondering:

We found that drinking coffee and tea separately or in combination were associated with lower risk of stroke and dementia. Intake of coffee alone or in combination with tea was associated with lower risk of poststroke dementia.

smitty1e• 5 years ago

Which invites the question: to what defree are these results due to general hydration, verses coffee/tea specifically?

scoopertrooper• 5 years ago

Coffee containing a diuretic is a pretty poor source of hydration

vr46• 5 years ago

They missed out the crucial metric of biscuit consumption along with the tea, for all we know, it was the Hob-Nobs all along.

PeterWhittaker• 5 years ago

I am glad I had finished my coffee before reading this, for had I not, I would now be wiping clean my keyboard and monitor.

Hmm, I hear the call of the biscuit tin....

frazbin• 5 years ago

Tea is amazing.. the fluoride content is a bit bothersome though: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4808922/ shame-- "all" you need to do is grow it in soil w/o F

Gatsky• 5 years ago

Just chiming in to say that these association studies are generally pretty useless. Good clickbait though.

On the other hand Mendelian randomization studies are a brilliant and actually useful way to explore such associations.

modriano• 5 years ago

Wow, that cookie prompt had such a dark pattern that it destroyed any credibility. I had to scroll down past multiple feet of blank space to get to the "accept my cookie choices" button, while the "accept all cookies" was visible from the start. Very scummy.

Ice_cream_suit• 5 years ago

Medicine 101:

Never make the mistake of taking research in plos seriously.

https://retractionwatch.com/?s=plos

leemailll2• 5 years ago

Plos ONE is different from other journals published by PLOS.

nothrowaways• 5 years ago

Main findings:

Compared with those who did not drink tea and coffee, drinking 2 to 3 cups of coffee and 2 to 3 cups of tea per day was associated with a 32% (HR 0.68, 95% CI, 0.59 to 0.79; P < 0.001) lower risk of stroke and a 28% (HR, 0.72, 95% CI, 0.59 to 0.89; P = 0.002) lower risk of dementia. Moreover, the combination of coffee and tea consumption was associated with lower risk of ischemic stroke and vascular dementia. Additionally, the combination of tea and coffee was associated with a lower risk of poststroke dementia, with the lowest risk of incident poststroke dementia at a daily consumption level of 3 to 6 cups of coffee and tea (HR, 0.52, 95% CI, 0.32 to 0.83; P = 0.007).

caffeine3• 5 years ago

The take away here is: there is no obvious evidence in this data that coffee and tea cause stroke or dementia.

So if we were worried about that, at least there is no obvious relationship.

sokoloff3• 5 years ago

Isn’t there a stronger conclusion evident: that they appear to reduce the risk (rather than not increase it)?

Zigurd• 5 years ago

The name checks out

kristopolous• 5 years ago

Apparently drinking soda can lead to those problems.

Could it be that tea and coffee drinkers in general drink less soda?

Was that controlled for?

Alternatively maybe the soda studies are just proxies for tea and coffee.

iamstupidsimple• 5 years ago

Was that controlled for?

Very little can be controlled for in studies like this. There are just too many factors to slice on, and before long you're just reading into noise.

hajile• 5 years ago

I'd love to see stats for caffeine-free people in a study like this.

It seems like anybody can tell you that Soda is worse for you than tea/coffee (possible exception of sweet tea).

hinkley• 5 years ago

Also, are they the same mechanism? We know that staying mentally active can delay dementia symptoms for decades.

Could it be that people who do mentally taxing work for a living drink more tea and coffee per capita, especially as they approach a certain age, so that coffee and dementia are negatively correlated but not causal?

ac292• 5 years ago

"estimate the associations between coffee/tea consumption and incident stroke and dementia, adjusting for [...], consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages"

stronglikedan• 5 years ago

Anecdotal, but I drink water, coffee, and tea almost exclusively. I maybe have one soda a month, and it's typically one of those 8oz jobbies, and typically with pizza, and typically only because it goes so well with pizza.

Borrible• 5 years ago

Since it suits my addiction, I happily ignore probable problems of the study design and approve of it.

Like Agent Dale Cooper[0] would have put it, that's a damn fine study.

[0] https://www.eater.com/2017/5/18/15656720/twin-peaks-dale-coo...

snerual• 5 years ago

From what I can see, the research method is quite flawed.

What if drinking more coffee or tea makes you die younger? This would result in the same data they base their conclusions on.

E.g. dementia en strokes correlate with age. If you die young because of high coffee consumption you wouldn't show up in the "drank coffee and subsequently had a stroke" group.

caffeine3• 5 years ago

It explicitly says they controlled for age..

curiousgal• 5 years ago

Aka survivorship bias.

xenihn• 5 years ago

I'd like to see a similar study with adderall thrown into the mix. I've been rotating between coffee, tea, and adderall for the past eight years.

bflesch• 5 years ago

Interesting - I'm wondering if both tea and coffee intake is just a proxy for people having cushy office jobs who therefore are less exposed to toxic substances over their lifetimes than others who work in non-office settings.

sokoloff3• 5 years ago

My grandfathers were a coal miner and a steel miller. Lots of coffee was consumed on/around the mines and on breaks in the mill. The image I have of both of them going off to work includes them carrying a silver or green painted Thermos bottle.

jazzyjackson• 5 years ago

factories invented the coffee break to increase worker productivity on long shifts (so Michael Pollan says), it is not a habit exclusive to white collar work.

rich_sasha4• 5 years ago

I see results popping up from time to time that caffeine is good for cardiovascular health. That makes intuitive sense to me - since a big benefit of aerobic exercise is getting your heart rate up, caffeine should have some of a similar effect. This might be particularly strong in the demographic susceptible to strokes and dementia, as they are less likely to be exercising in the first place.

Then, I wonder if better cardio health removes one stress factor causing these diseases.

Not remotely a biologist, and heavy coffee drinker.

mrjin• 5 years ago

The title makes me think consumption of coffee and tea together leads to higher risk of stroke and dementia. And the conclusion is just opposite.

JamesGi2• 5 years ago

In my personal unscientific opinion, I am observing complete opposite - coffee is the modern evil of our society.

My gut feeling is telling me that coffee and digital devices are responsible for big parts of the population suffering from mental illnesses, caused via chronic sleep deprivation. Of course majority of those mental illnesses are under reported - being sleep deprived for months does not make you bipolar maybe, but depression can and does happen (as well as myriad of other issues).

There are too many studies who show relationship between sleep and all kinds of illnesses (majority - mental), and nobody can argue that coffee is NOT responsible for that at least partially.

When I recently quit on coffee, I had such strong withdrawal symptoms, I was unable to function for 4 days. I had strong headaches and was almost vomiting.

No study will convince me this is a good/healthy thing for a human body. It is drug which is so omni-present, if you look around it is scary.

rich_sasha4• 5 years ago

Coffee does not really affect my sleep. I know this for 2 reasons:

1. I periodically go off coffee, for various reasons, but frankly never notice much difference to my sleep quality.

2. I have 2 kids that deprive me of sleep much more effectively. Or, put otherwise, no matter how much I drank during the day, I fall asleep like a log. And then it's not coffee disturbing my sleep, but crying children.

I can see though that coffee abuse _could_ lead to sleep deprivation and related issues. But it's like alcohol could lead to alcoholism, but doesn't have to. Though, incidentally, apparently deliberate sleep deprivation is one method of tackling depression - so it's not all bad.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-sleep-depriva...

throwanem• 5 years ago

apparently deliberate sleep deprivation is one method of tackling depression

Briefly and temporarily, but efficacy quickly drops off with near-term repetition. As (apparently) with psychedelics, it's good for a temporary change of perspective that can be leveraged with the right techniques into lasting improvement, but much more of an adjuvant to therapy than a therapy in its own right.

JamesGi2• 5 years ago

Please look up studies by Mathew Walker. They did numerous studies with people claiming coffee did not affect their sleep. What they found was while those people would fall asleep, and sleep throughout the night, the quality of the sleep (i.e. minutes in deep sleep) was substantially worse.

But I agree that abuse is what is causing majority of the problems (and it was in my personal case)

mettamage2• 5 years ago

being sleep deprived for months does not make you bipolar maybe, but depression can and does happen

It shaves off 10 to 20 IQ points in me when I'm on a bad streak. I have failed FAANG interviews because of bad sleep. I still probably would've failed them, but it'd have been much closer. I literally remember one coding interview where I was thinking "if I just had enough sleep, I'd have a solid shot" (the other coding interview was so easy I could even do it in my half-ragged sleep-deprived state).

_Understated_2• 5 years ago

It's funny you should talk about sleep deprivation messing with your mind... I once remember trying to program a for-loop in C# about 8 or 9 years ago (I've been programming since the 90s) when my son was a baby. He'd been up and down for a couple of days as he was unwell and my sleep-addled brain wouldn't let me create a for-loop.

No matter what I tried I could not get the code to compile.

I still laugh about it now but it definitely highlights the importance of sleep.

johnyzee• 5 years ago

I, too, am curious about the negative effects of coffee (or caffeine, rather). The potential positives are well known through many studies like the OP, but it is also well known that caffeine triggers a stress response (increased adrenaline, cortisol). We know that stress, beyond a short burst, is detrimental to health.

There seems to be a wide variety in different people's caffeine sensitivity, but for me, a coffee habit leads to a downwards spiral that ends with permanent tension and migraine episodes. I have tried this cycle enough times by now to know the cause and effect. I have to wonder what other effects the continued stimulation of caffeine has.

hvidgaard• 5 years ago

Sensitivity varies wildly for for different people. I seem to have a very low sensitivity - the only time I have felt the effects was on a barista course where I think I was up to 6-7 double espresso shots in the 90 minutes.

I drink espresso in the morning, black coffee through out the day and stop before dinner. It's around 4-8 mugs every day. On holidays I often go a days without any coffee for various reasons with no ill effects. I have gone an entire month substituting coffee with water to test the hypothesis that it doesn't really affect me and I felt no different. HR, BP, sleep quality, tiredness, mental performance, digestion all remained stable.

My neighbour gets a headache if he skips coffee for a day.

Cthulhu_• 5 years ago

I like to think people can decide to kick coffee for themselves if they actually suffer from sleep deprivation.

I for one have coffee in the mornings and stare at my phone until I fall asleep, and I sleep like the dead at night. But, that's purely anecdotal.

I don't think people will listen to others saying 'stop drinking coffee!' or 'stop looking at screens!' if they don't actually have problems. On that note, one shouldn't start self-medicating with sleep hormones (currently available over the counter) to try and optimize their sleep. If you have to force yourself to sleep so you can min/max your day, you're heading to a crash and burnout.

gregoriol• 5 years ago

That's why we need science and not opinions ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i_am_proteus• 5 years ago

Your experience suggests that your level of coffee intake may have been excessive.

I abstain from coffee (normally eight cups daily) and alcohol (normally three bottles of beer weekly) for a two-week period as a prescription against chemical dependency.

Typically this results in one day in which I am more irritable, nothing more.

Any consumptive habit can be evil in the absence of moderation and discipline.

leemailll2• 5 years ago

Sleep is everything you heard, that is more likely sleep is new buzz word. So are the gut microbiota

_Understated_2• 5 years ago

I haven't read the whole doc but does it take into account stress or factors that lead to stress?

For example, money problems, dangerous job, working in toxic environments etc.

I reckon we don't put enough "science" into working out the life-extending properties of a non-toxic job and a health bank balance.

FWIW I was diagnosed in September as having stable angina. I eat really healthy, don't smoke or drink, no family history of heart issues, and all my blood work was great. However, I have been under immense stress for the last two years to the point of sleepless nights etc (won't go into the details).

I am convinced it's stress that did it!

Edit: I'm fixed now btw :)

remorses• 5 years ago

The title is a bit misleading

mcculley• 5 years ago

As a matter of documenting potential conflict of interest, the paper should indicate the caffeine addiction status of the authors.

tambourine_man• 5 years ago

Phew, that’s great news. Let me get my cup.

penjelly• 5 years ago

id like to see a study on straight caffiene as well, so we know if caffiene is the main benefit or if its something in the bean juice instead

dyeje• 5 years ago

What kind of tea? Caffeinated specifically?

christrowe• 5 years ago

How about other drinks, especially soft drinks. Isn't it correlated in developing health diseases?

stubish• 5 years ago

Filtered or unfiltered ground coffee? I recall other studies that correlated protection or risk of cancer with coffee to different studies with different cultural groups, and noticed that the studies showing negative effects where all cultures that typically drank unfiltered coffee. Which, as an instant coffee drinker, left me in the dark. This study does check type of coffee, but does not differentiate filtered or unfiltered ground coffee. Not that it helps me, as I think I need another coffee before I can make sense of the instant vs. ground comparisons (first reading it seems contradictory, so I'm assuming I'm misreading or missing some nuance).

Consumption of coffee and tea and risk of developing stroke and dementia

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