10 ms·

Too much coffee can cause brain to shrink, raise risk of dementia by 53 percent

kderbyma 5y ago
this is confusing. is it a metric cup of coffee or a 'cup of coffee' which is apparently 6 oz.... why use cups of coffee...do they mean the measurement or the receptacle. how does one now measure their consumption? what is a Starbucks in cups?
- jrockway 5y ago
  I wanted to answer your question with a smug link to the study, but they use the same useless units: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1028415X.2021.1945858?journalCode=ynns20& https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1028415X.2021.19... I'm going to assume "cup" means "vessel that contains hot liquid" and rate 1 cup as around 250mL of brewed coffee, with a range of 150mL to 600mL. Not sure what that means for the results, but yeah, not a good unit.
  - tommiegannert 5y ago
    And in fact: > Habitual coffee intake was self-reported as cups per day, as part of the touchscreen questionnaire at baseline with the question ‘How many cups of coffee do you drink a day?’ (38). So, yes, it's self-reported in a non-standardized unit.
- cromka 5y ago
  I didn't read the article, but I have yet to encounter anyone measuring coffee by the imperial cup. Also never heard of a "metric cup of coffee".
- swiley 5y ago
  Nothing about coffee is precise in most cases.
Plough_Jogger 5y ago
"Consumption of >6 cups/day was associated with 53% higher odds of dementia compared to consumption of 1–2 cups/day"
- Filligree 5y ago
  Sleep hygiene is important, and it's critically important not to drink coffee late in... well, in the second half of the day really. A lack of sleep is also a serious risk factor for dementia. How much of this is just chronic sleep deprivation, I wonder?
  - Plough_Jogger 5y ago
    There is also the possibility that the causation happens in reverse: those with early symptoms of dementia could be self-medicating with excess caffeine.
    - maxerickson 5y ago
      Or the coffee could be preventing other health problems so that more drinkers make it to dementia.
      - wutbrodo 5y ago
        I doubt the study would fail to control for this; it's literally the most basic thing you can control for.
  - leephillips 5y ago
    I drink coffee after dinner and sleep like a baby (an expression invented by those who have not had babies, but you know what I mean). But it was not always thus. The secret is drug tolerance!
- ipnon 5y ago
  That's about 1000mg of caffeine a day. A gram a day is diminishing returns for the average coffee drinker, and may signal addiction. Addiction is dangerous in itself, so we might explain the outrageous results of this study in that way. A lifetime on the edge is a recipe for disaster!
bpodgursky 5y ago
linked associated next.
nyokodo 5y ago
Study in 6 months: “More than 6 cups of coffee not associated with dementia or brain size changes.”
- mcculley 5y ago
  It will be funded by the National Coffee Association.
gruez 5y ago
Title: >Too much coffee can cause your brain to shrink >cause Conclusion from study: >High coffee consumption was associated with smaller total brain volumes and increased odds of dementia. >associated
- arcticbull 5y ago
  I drink objectively too much coffee so "associated" is the best word I've heard all day.
  - h2odragon 5y ago
    what's "too much?" more than 4 liters a day? 8?
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      Really depends who you ask. For what it's worth I use the large meta study on cardiovascular health to establish guidelines, and it seems like 3-5 cups a day is not just fine but "optimal" under this study. [1] [1] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/circulationaha.113.005925 https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/circulationaha....
aaaxyz 5y ago
If I read the abstract correctly they found an inverse correlation between coffee consumption and brain volume, but since it was not a longitudinal study it doesn't prove that coffee is correlated to brain shrinkage?
coyotespike 5y ago
I'm going to completely disregard this study. "What would the world look like if this study were true?" 53% is such a large effect size that if the study were anywhere near accurate, I'd expect to have seen many other similar studies, and other knock-on effects (nothing in the body is isolated, even dementia). But we all know that studies routinely find no or only positive health benefits associated with drinking coffee. I bet this study is junk.
- jlmorton 5y ago
  I don't really disagree with you, but 53% is not that enormous of an effect. To put this in perspective, tobacco smoking raises the risk of lung cancer by about 3000%.
- EMM_386 5y ago
  Every time I see studies like this it reminds me of the Roche Biochemical Pathways http://biochemical-pathways.com/#/map/1 http://biochemical-pathways.com/#/map/1 For starters, there are over 1000 chemical compounds in coffee. For a 53% effect, let's toss out "coffee" and go with a specific compound. Are we talking about pH effects? The possible carcinogens with roasting? Caffeine? Does Diet Coke have this effect? The fertilizer used during growing? Does coffee candy with natural flavor have this effect? After that, how do the biochemical pathways and inherent homeostasis handle this change? Forget it. The rabbit hole is endless with studies like this.
- cmeacham98 5y ago
  It should be noted that "too much" is 6 cups per day, which I suspect very few people drink consistently.
  - AuthorizedCust 5y ago
    Really? A common measurement standard for a cup of coffee is 6 oz. If this is a 6 oz cup of normal-strength (i.e., weak) coffee, then that's only 36 oz, or three soda cans. What if you consume what's now considered normal, which seems quite strong? Two soda cans? How large is a mug, which people associate conceptually with "a cup"?
RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
One thing I have noticed is that studies that end up with conclusions that sound like BS end up being BS studies. The effect size of a 50% increase of dementia risk sounds way to high for coffee. Seems like there is a good chance of some correlated variable they are missing or a faulty assumption.
AlbertCory 5y ago
Head: Too many web pages to fill may be associated with garbage research getting published. Subhead: Journalist says "Not my fault! My editor told me 'fear sells' "
thysultan 5y ago
Any study that concludes with ~50% is random noise.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
atum47 5y ago
First Google result says a cup is 250 ml, is this right? I usually drink one and a half mug per day, which is about 750 ml. I I did stop drinking coffee after 18 o clock and I'm sleeping way better.
- dmoy 5y ago
  little bit less than 250mL, but pretty close, yea
- wyufro 5y ago
  Coffee cups as measured on the brewing machine is only about half that size. OTOH, the researcher says 1-2 cups is the normal amount in the article. To me that implies a larger cup size.
fermentation 5y ago
Why on earth do we measure coffee in cups? People drink more espresso and other drinks like cold brew than ever these days, just talk about caffeine in mg
- adenozine 5y ago
  Cups is actually more specific, if we're relying on the baseline of regular drip-brew joe. There's other factors at play than just caffeine intake or else we'd have heard about this surrounding energy drinks and meal replacement supplements. Granted, I haven't read the study, but the coffee/caffeine invariant just came to mind when I read your comment.
  - gnabgib 5y ago
    There are certainly other factors, but a cup is far from the specific solution you seek [0]. There's only one country that has current unit definition of a cup (the US), which is 8 (US) fluid ounces (fl.oz) (or 236.6ml), or differently as a "legal" cup at 240ml [1]. It used to be defined as 10 Imperial fl.oz in the UK (284ml), although rarely used. While much of the world defines a metric cup as 250ml. But then there's the exception that is coffee.. a cup of coffee in the US is the product of using 5 fl.oz producing approximately 4 fl.oz of coffee[0] A "cup": 118-284ml [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup_%28unit%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup_%28unit%29 [1]: https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/guidance-industry-guidelines-determining-metric-equivalents-household-measures https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidan...
    - adenozine 5y ago
      Ah, you've out-semantic'd me, I was referring to cups as being a more specific term of the different modes of coffee consumption. I'm in favor of the metric system. I did not know that the definition of a "cup" of coffee in the US was under such a broad variance. Thanks for the info!
- desktopninja 5y ago
  Yes. Using caffeine in mg would make for more sense to use. RE: https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/spilling-beans-how-much-caffeine-too-much https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/spilling-bean...
anonu 5y ago
I'm pretty sure there's a study I read that said coffee reduces the risk of dementia. Here's my rule for most everything in life: everything in moderation. When I skip a day with coffee, I enjoy it a lot more the next day.
irjustin 5y ago
There's too little information on the sampling > We conducted prospective analyses of habitual coffee consumption on 398,646 UK Biobank participants (age 37–73 years), including 17,702 participants with MRI information. We examined the associations with brain volume using covariate adjusted linear regression, and with odds of dementia (4,333 incident cases) and stroke (6,181 incident cases) using logistic regression. The study had access to a relatively large dataset, but how many people have dementia and drink >6/day? Also, for understanding the effects of coffee drinking on dementia the data set has to be tracked for a decent amount of time... decades? I have very strong doubts about the integrity of the data. How long do you have to drink >6/day before that kicks in? obviously doing it once isn't going to cut it.
- nieve 5y ago
  Am I reading this correctly that they're claiming 1.5% of the participants had strokes due to coffee?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
stevenalowe 5y ago
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1028415X.2021.1945858?journalCode=ynns20& https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1028415X.2021.19...
LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
Brain volume is overrated. See [1] https://iflscience.com/brain/man-tiny-brain-lived-normal-life/ https://iflscience.com/brain/man-tiny-brain-lived-normal-lif...

this is confusing. is it a metric cup of coffee or a 'cup of coffee' which is apparently 6 oz.... why use cups of coffee...do they mean the measurement or the receptacle. how does one now measure their consumption? what is a Starbucks in cups?

jrockway 5y ago
I wanted to answer your question with a smug link to the study, but they use the same useless units: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1028415X.2021.1945858?journalCode=ynns20& https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1028415X.2021.19... I'm going to assume "cup" means "vessel that contains hot liquid" and rate 1 cup as around 250mL of brewed coffee, with a range of 150mL to 600mL. Not sure what that means for the results, but yeah, not a good unit.
- tommiegannert 5y ago
  And in fact: > Habitual coffee intake was self-reported as cups per day, as part of the touchscreen questionnaire at baseline with the question ‘How many cups of coffee do you drink a day?’ (38). So, yes, it's self-reported in a non-standardized unit.
cromka 5y ago
I didn't read the article, but I have yet to encounter anyone measuring coffee by the imperial cup. Also never heard of a "metric cup of coffee".
swiley 5y ago
Nothing about coffee is precise in most cases.

Plough_Jogger 5y ago

"Consumption of >6 cups/day was associated with 53% higher odds of dementia compared to consumption of 1–2 cups/day"

Filligree 5y ago
Sleep hygiene is important, and it's critically important not to drink coffee late in... well, in the second half of the day really. A lack of sleep is also a serious risk factor for dementia. How much of this is just chronic sleep deprivation, I wonder?
- Plough_Jogger 5y ago
  There is also the possibility that the causation happens in reverse: those with early symptoms of dementia could be self-medicating with excess caffeine.
  - maxerickson 5y ago
    Or the coffee could be preventing other health problems so that more drinkers make it to dementia.
    - wutbrodo 5y ago
      I doubt the study would fail to control for this; it's literally the most basic thing you can control for.
- leephillips 5y ago
  I drink coffee after dinner and sleep like a baby (an expression invented by those who have not had babies, but you know what I mean). But it was not always thus. The secret is drug tolerance!
ipnon 5y ago
That's about 1000mg of caffeine a day. A gram a day is diminishing returns for the average coffee drinker, and may signal addiction. Addiction is dangerous in itself, so we might explain the outrageous results of this study in that way. A lifetime on the edge is a recipe for disaster!

bpodgursky 5y ago

linked associated next.

nyokodo 5y ago

Study in 6 months: “More than 6 cups of coffee not associated with dementia or brain size changes.”

mcculley 5y ago
It will be funded by the National Coffee Association.

gruez 5y ago

Title: >Too much coffee can cause your brain to shrink >cause Conclusion from study: >High coffee consumption was associated with smaller total brain volumes and increased odds of dementia. >associated

arcticbull 5y ago
I drink objectively too much coffee so "associated" is the best word I've heard all day.
- h2odragon 5y ago
  what's "too much?" more than 4 liters a day? 8?
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    Really depends who you ask. For what it's worth I use the large meta study on cardiovascular health to establish guidelines, and it seems like 3-5 cups a day is not just fine but "optimal" under this study. [1] [1] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/circulationaha.113.005925 https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/circulationaha....

aaaxyz 5y ago

If I read the abstract correctly they found an inverse correlation between coffee consumption and brain volume, but since it was not a longitudinal study it doesn't prove that coffee is correlated to brain shrinkage?

coyotespike 5y ago

I'm going to completely disregard this study. "What would the world look like if this study were true?" 53% is such a large effect size that if the study were anywhere near accurate, I'd expect to have seen many other similar studies, and other knock-on effects (nothing in the body is isolated, even dementia). But we all know that studies routinely find no or only positive health benefits associated with drinking coffee. I bet this study is junk.

jlmorton 5y ago
I don't really disagree with you, but 53% is not that enormous of an effect. To put this in perspective, tobacco smoking raises the risk of lung cancer by about 3000%.
EMM_386 5y ago
Every time I see studies like this it reminds me of the Roche Biochemical Pathways http://biochemical-pathways.com/#/map/1 http://biochemical-pathways.com/#/map/1 For starters, there are over 1000 chemical compounds in coffee. For a 53% effect, let's toss out "coffee" and go with a specific compound. Are we talking about pH effects? The possible carcinogens with roasting? Caffeine? Does Diet Coke have this effect? The fertilizer used during growing? Does coffee candy with natural flavor have this effect? After that, how do the biochemical pathways and inherent homeostasis handle this change? Forget it. The rabbit hole is endless with studies like this.
cmeacham98 5y ago
It should be noted that "too much" is 6 cups per day, which I suspect very few people drink consistently.
- AuthorizedCust 5y ago
  Really? A common measurement standard for a cup of coffee is 6 oz. If this is a 6 oz cup of normal-strength (i.e., weak) coffee, then that's only 36 oz, or three soda cans. What if you consume what's now considered normal, which seems quite strong? Two soda cans? How large is a mug, which people associate conceptually with "a cup"?

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago

One thing I have noticed is that studies that end up with conclusions that sound like BS end up being BS studies. The effect size of a 50% increase of dementia risk sounds way to high for coffee. Seems like there is a good chance of some correlated variable they are missing or a faulty assumption.

AlbertCory 5y ago

Head: Too many web pages to fill may be associated with garbage research getting published. Subhead: Journalist says "Not my fault! My editor told me 'fear sells' "

thysultan 5y ago

Any study that concludes with ~50% is random noise.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

atum47 5y ago

First Google result says a cup is 250 ml, is this right? I usually drink one and a half mug per day, which is about 750 ml. I I did stop drinking coffee after 18 o clock and I'm sleeping way better.

dmoy 5y ago
little bit less than 250mL, but pretty close, yea
wyufro 5y ago
Coffee cups as measured on the brewing machine is only about half that size. OTOH, the researcher says 1-2 cups is the normal amount in the article. To me that implies a larger cup size.

fermentation 5y ago

Why on earth do we measure coffee in cups? People drink more espresso and other drinks like cold brew than ever these days, just talk about caffeine in mg

adenozine 5y ago
Cups is actually more specific, if we're relying on the baseline of regular drip-brew joe. There's other factors at play than just caffeine intake or else we'd have heard about this surrounding energy drinks and meal replacement supplements. Granted, I haven't read the study, but the coffee/caffeine invariant just came to mind when I read your comment.
- gnabgib 5y ago
  There are certainly other factors, but a cup is far from the specific solution you seek [0]. There's only one country that has current unit definition of a cup (the US), which is 8 (US) fluid ounces (fl.oz) (or 236.6ml), or differently as a "legal" cup at 240ml [1]. It used to be defined as 10 Imperial fl.oz in the UK (284ml), although rarely used. While much of the world defines a metric cup as 250ml. But then there's the exception that is coffee.. a cup of coffee in the US is the product of using 5 fl.oz producing approximately 4 fl.oz of coffee[0] A "cup": 118-284ml [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup_%28unit%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup_%28unit%29 [1]: https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/guidance-industry-guidelines-determining-metric-equivalents-household-measures https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidan...
  - adenozine 5y ago
    Ah, you've out-semantic'd me, I was referring to cups as being a more specific term of the different modes of coffee consumption. I'm in favor of the metric system. I did not know that the definition of a "cup" of coffee in the US was under such a broad variance. Thanks for the info!
desktopninja 5y ago
Yes. Using caffeine in mg would make for more sense to use. RE: https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/spilling-beans-how-much-caffeine-too-much https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/spilling-bean...

anonu 5y ago

I'm pretty sure there's a study I read that said coffee reduces the risk of dementia. Here's my rule for most everything in life: everything in moderation. When I skip a day with coffee, I enjoy it a lot more the next day.

irjustin 5y ago

There's too little information on the sampling > We conducted prospective analyses of habitual coffee consumption on 398,646 UK Biobank participants (age 37–73 years), including 17,702 participants with MRI information. We examined the associations with brain volume using covariate adjusted linear regression, and with odds of dementia (4,333 incident cases) and stroke (6,181 incident cases) using logistic regression. The study had access to a relatively large dataset, but how many people have dementia and drink >6/day? Also, for understanding the effects of coffee drinking on dementia the data set has to be tracked for a decent amount of time... decades? I have very strong doubts about the integrity of the data. How long do you have to drink >6/day before that kicks in? obviously doing it once isn't going to cut it.

nieve 5y ago
Am I reading this correctly that they're claiming 1.5% of the participants had strokes due to coffee?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

stevenalowe 5y ago

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1028415X.2021.1945858?journalCode=ynns20& https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1028415X.2021.19...

LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago

Brain volume is overrated. See [1] https://iflscience.com/brain/man-tiny-brain-lived-normal-life/ https://iflscience.com/brain/man-tiny-brain-lived-normal-lif...