Leah:
Hello and welcome to the Ideal Nutrition Podcast. I am Leah Higl and I’m here with my co-host Aidan Muir. And today we’ll be covering the topic of coffee and health and longevity. I’m not gonna spend too much time on the intro. I kind of just wanna rip into it. I think this is a good topic to cover because of how much it is discussed online, but we’re just gonna get straight into it.
Aidan:
One of my first intros into the nutrition world as a dietician myself was I was At a gym in Wagga Wagga, which is where I started my business and somebody was running a gym challenge and they were the best spinner of yarns when it comes to nutrition. Just like no evidence for anything, but stories, like stories, like the classic, the reason why milk is bad for you is because it’s, for it’s meant for baby calves and like how quickly did they grow?
Well, if you want to, you want to gain size quickly.
Leah:
Like very reductive. Yeah.
Aidan:
Yeah. And like going to the coffee angle, he’s like, everyone starts a day with coffee, but like, why don’t we give it to kids? It’s cause it’s bad for them. Why do you start your day with that? And like, just had every story in the book like that.
Leah:
A great storyteller, great narratives.
Aidan:
Yeah. And one of the most humbling experiences for me was one of my first consults ever with somebody as a dietician was with somebody who had attended that same seminar at the start of the challenge, but they wanted a bit of extra support from a dietitian. And I felt like I just nailed my job of unpacking all the things that he had said that were inaccurate and giving her advice that was going to change her life. And then I saw weeks later, she was fan going over this guy’s stuff. I was like, I’ve got to do better. I’ve got to explain stuff better.
Let’s talk about what we’re here to actually talk about with coffee and longevity. The first thing that I do want to start off with is there are some clear downsides of coffee, or caffeine/coffee, the first one is the impact on sleep. This is such a well-documented thing that if you have caffeine too close to when you go to bed, it is likely to disrupt sleep. There’s different levels. There’s individual variation with this. Some people are quicker metabolisers, some are slower. There’s a lot to go through there.
That also leads us to the question of what if somebody has decaf coffee versus caffeinated coffee, like that changes stuff a little bit too. But another clear downside is caffeine can up-regulate anxiety in certain people too. That is a relevant discussion, partly because anxiety is so prevalent as well. It’s another thing worth factoring in here. Those are very clear things. Then there’s also a bit more complicated, but some potential short-term risk of things like heart complications, in people who might be at risk of it, particularly if they randomly increase their caffeine intake. We know that if you consistently have the same amount of caffeine, that’s less likely to occur or be an issue. But if you just have a random spike in your caffeine intake, it might be a risk for certain people.
Leah:
Let’s get into some research now. So covering some observational data. There is actually quite a lot of observational data supporting coffee helping longevity. So focusing just on one study for a moment, a study from 2012 on coffee consumption in over 400,000 people in America, aged 50 to 71, observed that those who drank the most coffee were significantly less likely to have died during the 12 to 13 year study period. And that’s actually like, it’s quite high in terms of the amount of coffee that was actually consumed on that higher end up to like that four to six cups of coffee per day.
So in that study, coffee consumption was assessed once at baseline and it was inversely linked with mortality rates. So they also adjusted for other variables such as drinking and smoking, which is quite interesting because the coffee intake was actually linked with increased risk of death and mortality initially. But then after adjusting for those couple of variables, it obviously dropped and went in the other direction. Quoting the study specifically, as compared with men who did not drink coffee, men who drank six or more cups of coffee per day had a 10% lower risk of death. Whereas women in this category of consumption had a 15% lower risk.
So that’s quite interesting because for just this one variable, like that’s quite significant.
Aidan:
I’d love to see old mate on that stage reconcile the- That information. The six or more having a lower risk of death than zero. Crazy. Those participants for the entire gym challenge had to have no coffee for the entire challenge.
Leah:
For the entire challenge, that would just make it so miserable.
Aidan:
Yeah, crazy. Particularly with this knowledge. so that’s obviously just one individual study. It had a massive sample size though, like it was over 400,000 people.
Leah:
Huge.
Aidan:
But it was just one study and you could poke some holes. could be like, they literally just assessed coffee intake once over many, many years. It’s not meant to be the most comprehensive. It’s just more to just like unpack some stuff, just like that example about being like zero versus six, like that’s such a huge difference. It’s enough to make you think, well, it’s like, well, how bad could it be if it happened to be bad for longevity? But based on the study, it’s linked with longevity. It also does line up with the rest of research.
It is a situation where a lot of these studies differ in terms of how much coffee you have before at plateaus. Like that one was four to six, others come back with like two to three cups, but it’s a very common trend that coffee is more linked with longevity than not being linked to it. One thing that I have found a bit difficult in reading these studies is i’ve taken the time and read a few of them at least word for word, which is takes a lot of time. And so it’s crazy is a lot of them just don’t mention many specifics about like what’s added to the coffee and all those things.
And I kind of get why, because it’s these massive sample size studies where they’re just asking the question, like, you drink coffee? How much do you drink? Like what I’m curious about though is how much milk is added? What types of milk is added? How much sugar? Like would that change the start? Of course it would change it in some way, or form. That first study we talked about was from America. Cause often when I bring up this data, I do hear some people instantly be like, but I’m assuming that’s like Italy where they’re having like, it’s black coffee by itself. It’s interesting that that is American based data specifically. Now going towards the decaf kind of question or the different forms of coffee. Decaf coffee is also linked with health benefits as well, which adds another little thing into here about it being maybe it’s the coffee itself, not the caffeine or vice versa to a degree.
Talking about some stats from another observational study, noting that all of these studies will be linked in the show notes if you do want to read them. One of these other large observational studies found that the greatest risk reduction was seen with two to three cups per day when compared with no coffee. And it was associated with a 14% lower likelihood of death for decaf coffee, 27 % lower for ground coffee and 11% lower for instant coffee. That’s just the data. Everything from there is speculation as to why there’s differences between the two. Like the fact that there’s a 27% difference for ground versus instant coffee.
There are many explanations in relation to, is the instant coffee more processed? Does that decrease certain things like are the antioxidants lower? Are there, I suppose there’s other things we’ll talk about with the mechanisms, but there might be differences in relation to the processing. I’ve also heard other people talk about other things that might be different about instant coffee as well.
Leah:
Yeah. And then moving on to the mechanisms. So I think this, all this data is a very interesting, but like, why is this happening and like, like spending a bit of time speculating there. So one explanation that could be a little bit relevant is that caffeine, coffee tends to energise people. So do they then go on to do more activity? Are they less sedentary? Like are there other habits that are being impacted by the caffeine intake that would somewhat explain this kind of lower risk of mortality? Another thought is also what is it replacing?
Is there a chance that the coffee is replacing other things from a dietary lifestyle perspective that would otherwise have been there? Like are people having a lower intake of certain other negative things after the other stuff is accounted for? So like the smoking and alcohol because obviously that was taken out of the data in terms of like isolating the caffeine itself. There’s also I guess the role of caffeine and coffee as an appetite suppressant. Like was there maybe a correlation with a lower body weight and better weight management long-term and that kind of playing a role.
But the main thing that is consistently proposed as a general mechanism for this is more to do with the polyphenols and antioxidants in coffee. So there are some components such as chlorogenic acids and diterpenes. So there are some components such as chlorogenic acids and diterpenes that have been identified in coffee that are likely beneficial. But the consensus typically is that there are like hundreds of potential components that might have like more of a synergistic effect within coffee that could be playing a positive role in longevity and health.
Aidan:
Yeah. And those are the things that typically are reduced in that instant coffee. Noting still that in that specific study, instant coffee was still in a two to three cup per day amount was linked to a reduction in mortality by 11%. So it’s still pretty impressive. So other thoughts or a bit of a summary. It’s still worth factoring in the stuff that we clearly know. I find it an interesting question with this knowledge to be like, if somebody comes up to you and says they don’t drink any coffee, should they start with this knowledge? And I’m not personally necessarily at that point. I am more though at the point that if somebody comes up to me,
And coffee is not impacting their slave from any way that we can measure or tell. It’s not impacting anxiety or anything like that. And then they’re suggesting that they should reduce their intake because coffee is quote unquote bad. That’s when I’m more like, okay, I’d be a bit hesitant to do that. Like there’s no need, particularly if you enjoy it and everything like that. Other stuff we know, although it’s hard to gather from the data, what people are doing in that it’s pretty clear that you should probably be reducing higher sugar options.
Like if somebody started going to Starbucks and getting their most monstrous, like their highest sugar drink and having six of those for a day, I’m willing to go out on a limb and guess it’s not going to be good for longevity. It’s my own two cents. Make of that what you will. I’d also be cautious of quick increases in caffeine in general. Like I wouldn’t go from zero to six all in one go. If your goal was to like, Oh, this research has had six I’m gonna go do that.
Like I would be cautious of that. I also am a bit of a believer that having six per day is probably going to reduce your sleep unless you like front load it super, super early, just based on the data we’ve got and or unless you are very quick metaboliser. But the main kind of summary is I definitely wouldn’t do it as bad for longevity. And if anything, it’s consistently leaning towards the positive angle with longevity.
Leah:
This has been episode 184 of the Ideal Nutrition Podcast. If you haven’t yet left a rating or review, it would be greatly appreciated for you to do so, but otherwise, thanks for tuning in.