Ok, let's talk briefly about this study that has proven that "six coffees a day may save your life" https://twitter.com/GidMK/status/1014020529030881280 …
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If you answered "It's an observational study, genius", you did better than 99/100 journos, apparently Good job
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It was an observational study that really just looked at correlation between coffee and ill health. They controlled for some things, but honestly not all that much
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For example, their only measure of SES was education, which as we all know is pretty problematicpic.twitter.com/fmhm8ZHQS6
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Maybe people who drink coffee are different to people who don't. Maybe they are also healthier in other ways not captured by this study It's very likely, especially given previous research
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Another point: while there was a decrease in all-cause mortality in the coffee-drinkers, there were no decreases in rates of : Lung cancer Bronchial cancer Colorectal cancer Breast cancer Pancreatic cancer Ischemic heart disease Stroke Cardiovascular disease Respiratory disease
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The ABSOLUTE decrease in risk (as opposed to the relative decrease) was also tiny, maxing out at ~0.3% for 10-year all-cause mortality
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In other words, drinking coffee for a decade reduced your risk of dying by less than half of a percent point, even if we take that result at face value
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But to me, one of the BIG smoking guns here...prior to adjusting for things like sex and BMI, the results were REALLY significant After adjusting? Only just barely
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This almost certainly means that, if you were to include more factors, you'd see the results trend to no statistical significance
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Which brings us neatly to the point of the study It wasn't to prove that coffee was GOOD for you It was to show that people with genetic variants that make caffeine metabolism problematic can drink coffee safely
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All they wanted to show was that coffee is probably not too bad for you, and that most people can drink it fine Which they did ANYTHING MORE IS TOTAL NONSENSE
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Coffee is a fucking brilliant invention. But drinking it to make yourself healthier or to "Save your life" is bullshit that you should be wary of
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If you enjoyed this thread, it is now expanded on in blog form here:https://medium.com/@gidmk/6-coffees-a-day-wont-save-your-life-9c81ba56d1e5 …
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End of conversation
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