Study: Drinking coffee and tea is associated with a 32% lower risk of stroke

[malkie]

Causation or correlation? No facts in evidence to decide that question.

However, a correlation, especially in the long run, would suggest that there's likely no harm in drinking coffee in moderation and at the right time. A correlation would be good reason to believe (or suspect) that drinking coffee is beneficial for your health.

Yesbut
[apologist_hat]
Some time in the future we will discover that the health benefits of coffee & tea was a misperception - evidence will be found that there's a hidden harm, and that almost all coffee and tea drinkers die before the age of 110.
[/apologist_hat]

[yellowstone123]

Causation or correlation? No facts in evidence to decide that question.

However, a correlation, especially in the long run, would suggest that there's likely no harm in drinking coffee in moderation and at the right time. A correlation would be good reason to believe (or suspect) that drinking coffee is beneficial for your health.

You know DT you can correlate the number of street lights on any given street in the city and the number of patrol cars driving around the city at the same time when the lights turned on. It may be 12 and 12 over ten years which means the correlation coefficient is 1. A high correlation (.97 or .98 or the ultimate 1) infers prediction not causation.

[I Have Questions]

I don’t understand why coffee is deemed an evil. It’s not hallucinogenic, it doesn’t lower your moral boundaries as alcohol can be prone to do. It doesn’t make you act out of character. There’s some downsides to drinking to much in too short a period, but those downsides are similar to drinking too much caffeinated soda in too short a period - and that’s not embargoed.

I just don’t get why coffee, and not sugary drinks, for example.

[doubtingthomas]

You know DT you can correlate the number of street lights on any given street in the city and the number of patrol cars driving around the city at the same time when the lights turned on. It may be 12 and 12 over ten years which means the correlation coefficient is 1. A high correlation (.97 or .98 or the ultimate 1) infers prediction not causation.

But you can suspect causation when you control for many variables and do a careful statistical analysis.

[drumdude]

Nutritional and health studies are among the hardest to do correctly and without bias. There’s a huge industry for creating results to advance a product or agenda. The experiments are expensive, time consuming, and rely on the participants adhering to the process. If a study finds something, it’s unlikely a 3rd party will be able to replicate and test it.

I would take the findings from any study with a huge grain of salt…

[Doctor Steuss]

Nutritional and health studies are among the hardest to do correctly and without bias. There’s a huge industry for creating results to advance a product or agenda. The experiments are expensive, time consuming, and rely on the participants adhering to the process. If a study finds something, it’s unlikely a 3rd party will be able to replicate and test it.

I would take the findings from any study with a huge grain of salt…

Supplement studies can definitely be some of the worse to comb through in trying to find what's legitimate and what's garbage. Not sure if it's gotten better at all, but if the only research that was being put out was from somewhere like China, or from one of the "pay-for-outcome" advertising study mills, it was pretty much a guarantee that the findings were rubbish. While there's definitely some issues with funding potentially influencing findings, I think that the two biggest issues are that they usually rely on self-reporting (i.e. study participants self-report on diet/consumption, and there are no controls), and that they rarely account for socioeconomic status. One of the greatest examples of the latter was the research about red wine consumption being healthy. It took at least a decade before researchers started looking a bit deeper on why people (particularly in the US) who drink red wine would have different mortality outcomes than people who didn't.

Forever, red wine was touted as a "healthy alcohol." Now, it's finally come around full circle to where the general consensus is that there is no such thing as a healthy alcohol. Any benefits of compounds within an alcoholic beverage are more than negated by the alcohol itself. They realized that red wine drinkers generally came from higher socioeconomic strata, and had access to preventative medicine, regular doctor visits, etc.

For the most part, research coming out of major universities is generally somewhat insulated from the funding bias issue. Normally in those settings, the study is designed first, and then the proposal is shot-gunned out in search of grants. In other words, the study (and methodologies which could potentially influence outcomes) is designed before funding. Then the grant funding comes from the tax deduction budget allocation of a pharma group, or one of the US's health organizations (NIH, for example). Or at least that's what I've gathered from friends at research unis.

[BeNotDeceived]

I don’t understand why coffee is deemed an evil. It’s not hallucinogenic, it doesn’t lower your moral boundaries as alcohol can be prone to do. It doesn’t make you act out of character. There’s some downsides to drinking to much in too short a period, but those downsides are similar to drinking too much caffeinated soda in too short a period - and that’s not embargoed.

I just don’t get why coffee, and not sugary drinks, for example.

Because the WOW is nonsense since it was created by a con-man as a unique set of guidelines for his concocted religion to make it appear more 'divinely-inspired'. At some point, the corporate execs running this multi-hundred billion dollar real estate corp. which masquerades as a religion are going to have to repeal coffee and tea as off-limits because first, science has proven them both actually healthy for you and second, if they remove coffee and tea as now OK to consume, it will open more doors for potential converts from other cultural backgrounds where coffee and tea are staples of their daily diets (if they're actually even interested at this point in membership numbers increasing when they no longer need tithepayers, although, more members = free labor).

[Res Ipsa]

Nutritional and health studies are among the hardest to do correctly and without bias. There’s a huge industry for creating results to advance a product or agenda. The experiments are expensive, time consuming, and rely on the participants adhering to the process. If a study finds something, it’s unlikely a 3rd party will be able to replicate and test it.

I would take the findings from any study with a huge grain of salt…

Supplement studies can definitely be some of the worse to comb through in trying to find what's legitimate and what's garbage. Not sure if it's gotten better at all, but if the only research that was being put out was from somewhere like China, or from one of the "pay-for-outcome" advertising study mills, it was pretty much a guarantee that the findings were rubbish. While there's definitely some issues with funding potentially influencing findings, I think that the two biggest issues are that they usually rely on self-reporting (i.e. study participants self-report on diet/consumption, and there are no controls), and that they rarely account for socioeconomic status. One of the greatest examples of the latter was the research about red wine consumption being healthy. It took at least a decade before researchers started looking a bit deeper on why people (particularly in the US) who drink red wine would have different mortality outcomes than people who didn't.

Forever, red wine was touted as a "healthy alcohol." Now, it's finally come around full circle to where the general consensus is that there is no such thing as a healthy alcohol. Any benefits of compounds within an alcoholic beverage are more than negated by the alcohol itself. They realized that red wine drinkers generally came from higher socioeconomic strata, and had access to preventative medicine, regular doctor visits, etc.

For the most part, research coming out of major universities is generally somewhat insulated from the funding bias issue. Normally in those settings, the study is designed first, and then the proposal is shot-gunned out in search of grants. In other words, the study (and methodologies which could potentially influence outcomes) is designed before funding. Then the grant funding comes from the tax deduction budget allocation of a pharma group, or one of the US's health organizations (NIH, for example). Or at least that's what I've gathered from friends at research unis.

Good points on interpreting studies. Coffee itself is a good example. It was thought to have adverse health effects until researchers recognized that coffee consumption was associated with smoking and sedentary lifestyles. Controlling for those other variables made the harmful health effects largely disappear.

Another problem I've seen in this area of research is studies that comb through large accumulations of data looking for correlations. This type of data mining is guaranteed to find spurious correlations due to chance at customary p-levels.

I tend to rely on nutritional claims based on multiple studies by different researchers and organizations that are not based on data mining, that demonstrate a significant effect size, and provide plausible causal evidence. In practice, that means high quality literature reviews.

[hauslern]

The highest rates for obesity and diabetes are the southern states. Diabetes in somewhat high in Utah. I think DanP should for his long health need lose some weight.

[drumdude]

The highest rates for obesity and diabetes are the southern states. Diabetes in somewhat high in Utah. I think DanP should for his long health need lose some weight.

Ozempic is becoming really popular and seems to be very effective. It’s least affordable in the states where it is needed the most, sadly.