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Moderate coffee intake (2–3 cups/day) linked to lowest mental disorder risk https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165032725024346?via=ihub
I still don't understand in detail what a "cup" is and if coffee type and preparation matter.
A cup is a relative unit
However, the study stops short of proving cause and effect. The participants were only asked about their coffee drinking habits once, at the start of the study period, and this wasn't monitored over time.
And they were followed for a median of 13 years.
This is a terrible fucking study. 13 years is a huge amount of time and people's habits change constantly.
Someone could have easily started out drinking 5 cups a day and in 13 years be drinking no coffee at all.
Makes all their data invalid as far as I'm concerned. They could have at least made 1 single follow-up survey at the end to check if their drinking habits had changed. Jeez....
I don't know rowrow, I've been consuming coffee in the same amount and much the same way for well over 20 years.
Two to three cups a day, for those wondering
I would think lowering stress would be maximized by just not taking stimulants 😅
you'd think so, but then you'd be completely wrong. TWO TO THREE CUPS A DAY OR ELSE.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165032725024346
looking at the study, basically they just found the same J-shaped correlation as found with other drug use like alcohol consumption
that is, the minority who fully abstain from alcohol have increased mortality risk and the minority who engage in excessive drinking also see increased mortality risk, but the majority who engage in moderate alcohol consumption tend to have the lowest mortality risk
The same is found here with caffeine consumption: in the dataset they looked at, most people drink 2 - 3 cups of coffee per day, and there are minorities on either side who drink much less or abstain from coffee, and a minority on the other side who drink much more than 2 - 3 cups a day.
Because most people don't suffer from mood disorders, the people who do suffer are over-represented on the margins and diluted by healthy people in the category of average consumption.
It's unlikely that actually drinking 2 - 3 cups of coffee is responsible for the positive outcomes in mood (just like we could say drinking moderate amounts of alcohol are not likely responsible for improved mortality rates), instead it's probably fair to say that the average, healthy person tends to be like everyone else and engages in socially acceptable, moderate drug use. Why they are healthy probably has less to do with their drug use and more to do with other factors like diet, exercise, economic status, access to healthcare, environmental factors (like not living in a heavily polluted place, like the way ghettos are built next to a major interstate, or rather how interstates are often built through the poorest neighborhoods), and so on.
I haven't had a cup of coffee in weeks. This really stresses me out! /s
If this was actually science we would be studying it terms of caffeine consumption not the targetted marketing of coffee consumption. This is an ad masquerading as a study.
The ideal amount of coffee is "one more cup".
Sleep is overrated.
The statistical number-crunching showed that those who drank two to three cups of coffee a day were the least likely to develop mental health problems, compared to people who didn't drink coffee at all or who drank more than three cups.
How much is a cup? Is it the cooking unit equivalent to 250ml or is it a colloquial "cup" that could be anything from the size of a thimble to the size of your head?
If you're going to report on a study about "how much is optimal" can you at least be clear on the units?
Didn't read this but I will assume it confirms #mystudies showing the correct amount is 1 liter of cold brew per 5 hours sleep the night prior
Low stress giants is probably a good thing.
Who funded the research, or requested it?
here's the study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165032725024346
all the co-authors are Chinese and the main author is associated with:
Department of Nutrition and Food Hygiene, Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Public Health Safety, School of Public Health, Institute of Nutrition, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200030, China
They don't seem to disclose who funded the study, they claim the funders did not influence the design of the study, but then they also claim they did not have any specific grants from any public, private, non-profit, etc. sources.
The study just analyzes an existing data set, and all it does is show the same J-shaped curve that is commonly found with many things, e.g. the same thing they found in this study with coffee consumption is found with alcohol consumption:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2443580
Setting aside population risk, any clinician who has tried to counsel a patient about alcohol use has encountered the question: “But I thought a couple of drinks a night is good for my health?”
...
Three examples—alcohol consumption, body mass index (BMI), and blood pressure—help elucidate the challenges posed by J-shaped curves. With respect to alcohol consumption, a meta-analysis of 34 prospective studies, pooling findings from more than 1 million individuals and almost 100 000 deaths, showed a J-shaped relationship between alcohol intake and total mortality.1 Consumption of up to 2 drinks per day in women and 4 drinks per day in men was associated with lower mortality than zero consumption, with about one-half drink per day associated with the lowest mortality risk.
BMI and blood pressure are more complex risk factors not solely based on consumption, as with alcohol. BMI is a simple, if imperfect, proxy for energy metabolism—and therefore the current standard for representing healthy weight. A prospective study of 1.46 million white adults demonstrated a J-shaped association between BMI and all-cause mortality after adjusting for potential confounders, including smoking and alcohol intake.2 All-cause mortality was generally lowest among those with BMI of 20.0 to 24.9 and higher on either side of that interval.
tl;dr it's not that it's healthy to drink a couple drinks a day, or to drink a few cups of coffee a day; it's more like because the average person consumes that much alcohol or coffee, the data we have is skewed and the outliers who fully abstain or over-indulge also happen to have worse health outcomes
being average is what is being tracked here, not that moderate alcohol consumption actually improves health outcomes
this is like the finding that any running no matter the mileage or time spent running massively improves health outcomes - that's based on correlation studies that found people who identify as runners tend to be more healthy (because being a runner is associated with people who have higher income, better access to healthcare, etc. - not because running an insignificant amount actually massively improves your health).
This is a science and medicine communication issue. The take-away is absolutely not that drinking 2 - 3 cups of coffee is better for your mental health.