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Coffee linked to slower biological ageing among those with severe mental illness

(www.kcl.ac.uk)
204 points bookofjoe | 1 comments | 06 Dec 25 21:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.219s | source
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djaouen ◴[06 Dec 25 22:26 UTC] No.46177130[source]▶
As someone formally diagnosed with one of these mental illnesses, I can confidently say that coffee triggers a beneficial reaction to my illness as well as to other health-adjoint mechanisms in my body. To me, drinking coffee is like breathing air or eating food, and to go without it means symptom flare-ups.
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rendall ◴[07 Dec 25 09:55 UTC] No.46180525[source]▶
Coffee's great. In the early morning, just the thought of a large cup of steaming black gets me out of bed with pep in my step. A cup of coffee or two in the afternoon always kicks the doldrums away.

Before the grumpy start making noise, yes, I absolutely am addicted. If I miss two days, then I get a headache for three days. Still definitely worth it. Everybody should drink coffee. There is no good reason not to.

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dns_snek ◴[07 Dec 25 10:25 UTC] No.46180678[source]▶
> Everybody should drink coffee. There is no good reason not to.

They absolutely shouldn't. Many people suffer negative side effects from consuming coffee even if they don't realize it, like anxiety and jitters. Consuming stimulants is also a bad idea if you already have high blood pressure or heart rate.

> The analysis found that participants with severe hypertension who drank two or more cups of coffee each day doubled their risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, compared to those who didn't drink coffee. Drinking just one cup of coffee or any amount of green tea – regardless of blood pressure level – did not raise the risk, the study showed.

https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/12/21/people-with-very-hi...

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rendall ◴[07 Dec 25 11:13 UTC] No.46180897[source]▶
The claim that some people with high blood pressure may risk cardiovascular harm from coffee is supported, under certain conditions, especially severe hypertension and heavier consumption. This is true.

The more general inference everybody with any high blood pressure or health risk should avoid coffee is not supported by the bulk of epidemiological evidence: moderate coffee use appears at worst neutral for many people, possibly beneficial for some.

A comprehensive meta-analysis of decades' worth of cohort studies concluded that moderate coffee consumption (roughly 2-5 cups/day) was associated with a lower or neutral risk of cardiovascular disease overall (coronary heart disease, stroke, heart failure, CVD mortality) compared to no coffee.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3945962/

So drink up! Drink all the coffees! Unless you are a reply-guy with severe heart problems and an uncontrollable compulsion to drink mass quantities, then talk to a doctor first.

Also don't drink coffee if you don't like it, or you're a Mormon, a strict Seventh-day Adventist, a member of certain Pentecostal or Anabaptist groups, a Theravāda Buddhist monk, a strict Salafist, or part of a strict Ital-observant Rastafarian community. If in doubt, speak to your bishop, branch president, pastor, priest, imam, monk, or whoever guides your spiritual tradition.

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microjim ◴[07 Dec 25 13:13 UTC] No.46181444[source]▶
I'm a caffeine/coffee consumer because I like its effects, and the claims to overall physiological benefits appear solid, but why do you think multiple and varied spiritual schools choose to forgo it, especially in coffee form?
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1. rendall ◴[07 Dec 25 14:37 UTC] No.46181961[source]▶
I don't think that, when all is considered, there are that many spiritual traditions that forbid it, and there seems to be no unifying principle from the ones that do. Mormons forbid "hot drinks" that are, for historical reasons, interpreted to include coffee. Salafists do it because certain early jurists briefly classified coffee as an intoxicant. Seventh-day Adventists avoid stimulants as part of a broader health code. Theravāda monks avoid anything that affects wakefulness after midday. A few Pentecostal or Anabaptist groups inherited older temperance rules about stimulants. These prohibitions all come from very different origins, and none of them amounts to a shared spiritual insight about coffee itself.

In fact, so few spiritual traditions do forbid it, including the most forbidding and censorious, that it may well be considered miraculous. In my personal religion it is tantamount to a sacrament ;)