Want to be good to your liver? Pour yourself another cup o’ joe.
British researchers report that coffee of all kinds may reduce your risk for chronic liver disease.
For the study researchers used U.K. Biobank data on nearly 500,000 people with “known coffee consumption” who were followed for a median of about 11 years. Median means half were followed longer, half for less time.
Seventy-eight percent drank ground or instant caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee, and 22% didn’t drink any coffee.
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Over the study period, 3,600 people developed chronic liver disease and 301 died.
More than 5,400 participants developed chronic liver disease or a build-up of fat in the liver known as fatty liver disease, and more than 180 developed liver cancer.
Compared with non-coffee drinkers, those who drank coffee had a 21% lower risk of chronic liver disease and a 20% lower risk of chronic or fatty liver disease. Their risk of dying from chronic liver disease fell 49%, researchers found.
Senior researcher Dr. Paul Roderick, a professor of public health at the University of Southampton. emphasizes that this study doesn’t prove coffee prevents liver disease, only that there appears to be a link.
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“One has to be careful in extrapolating from observational studies to say there is a causal relationship between coffee and liver disease,” Roderick says. “Other attributes of coffee drinkers might be associated with
