Join the discussion
Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.
- Hacker News
- Maybe because the other way to get Caffine is in drinks full of corn syrup.by moojacob
- The study links it to better metabolic health. Did you assume it meant worse?by llm_nerd
- You can get corn syrup free monsters everywhere. Or those 5 hour ones, or Celsius or whatever.
The reason to prefer coffee is that it tastes less aggressive than those I think
by nemomarx - Something I learned years ago: caffeine doesn't directly "wake you up" it merely causes a trickle of adrenaline release.
So I'm guessing you could get the same boost from exercise, probably moreso.
Anything that elevates the heart rate for a bit is generally good for humans.
by unselect5917 - This was not a caffeine consumption study.by u1hcw9nx
- That's totally wrong.
For one, caffeine is a known adenosine antagonist. The effects of adenosine is described as "drowsiness" or "relaxed".
by RobLach - This is not the mechanism by which caffeine promotes wakefulness.by n8henrie
- Only if it’s coffee from Brazil :-)by delduca
- Clicked article expecting the requisite "...in mice" but it turns out this could be legit!
- Love coffee, drink it every day. This study is just as useful as other studies that correlate coffee with negative outcomes. Which is to say, it’s a study that just shows some correlations. Causation is not particularly likely. Drink coffee if you like it but don’t expect health benefits or harms.
- I wonder if the mechanism of action here is increased caffeine consumption resulting in more/longer duration/higher intensity exercise.by derektank
- I like coffee and drink about 5 to 7 Nespresso capsules a day. Except when I forget, or have no access to coffee.
I did not notice any change between these two extremes.
- I also drink a lot of coffee and I really hate it when I'm visiting a client and they offer me only 1 or 2 cups of coffee during the day!by amelius
- I have to say, initially coffee is good, but over time it chips away your sleep, your rest and then you kind of lose it. I have periods where I purposely decondition my body and brain from coffee just to reap the benefits again without all the longterm downsides. As always, it is about balance and moderation. I hope this helps you.by mawadev
- High SHBG and lower free hormones isn't a good thing usually. Starving and anorexia (as an example) can make your SHBG levels skyrocket, resulting in low free hormone levels.by eiriklv
- Here is the original study: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00394-026-04038-z
Weirdly, I cannot copy text from that page. What am I doing wrong?
Regardless, here is the result summary:
This part: "positive associations with total testosterone (β = +0.29 nmol/L per cup/day)". For testosterone, 1 nmol/L ≈ 28.8 ng/dL. So: +0.29 nmol/L ≈ +8.4 ng/dL per additional cup/day.> Higher coffee intake groups showed lower total and visceral fat and higher skeletal muscle mass, while BMI was comparable across groups. Inverse correlations were observed between coffee intake and circulating branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) in both sexes. In men, higher coffee intake correlated with a more favourable glucose-insulin profile. Multivariable-adjusted models revealed a distinct hormonal pattern: positive associations with total testosterone (β = +0.29 nmol/L per cup/day), bioavailable testosterone, and sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG), alongside inverse associations with free testosterone and the free androgen index (FAI). In women, hormonal associations were more limited, with positive associations for SHBG and inverse associations for free testosterone and FAI.Really, this will have no meaningful impact on your health. It is widely discussed by TRT (testosterone replacement therapy) doctors that supplements that can increase your total test by 100ng/dL will have no meaningful impact. Literally, you need to drink 12 cups of coffee per day to get a ~100ng/dL improvement. You are going to have a lot of second order effects from drinking 12 cups of coffee per day! I would never recommend it.
- I often drink a 12 cup pot in a day. No noticeable effects.
Why are coffee cups smaller than cups?
Maybe I’m just slow, but it makes doing the mental math a lot more difficult than it needs to be. Maybe I just need more coffee.
by doubled112 - The endless articles about studies that are pro-coffee make me highly skeptical. They all feel like advertising by the coffee industry to help coffee addicts feel good about their habit instead of feeling like they should cut back.by al_borland
- Addiction implies harm. What is the harm in coffee consumption?
- I don't think there needs to be a nefarious motive for results like this to come out of nutrition studies. If you have a pile of data and you analyze every possible correlation between every possible pair of variables, you will find something significant by pure chance. Green jelly beans and all that.
Whether or not the results are being taken seriously is another matter.
by pibaker - You just have to mirror your consumption of coffee; eggs; meat &c with the aggregate study mood for a given week, is all.by smitty1e
- Why should they feel like cutting back? Where’s the evidence that it’s bad for you?by brokencode
- The meat, tobacco, alcohol, etc industries would like very much to be able to do this but haven't with much larger budgets.
Caffeine causes increased locomotor activity. It's possible that the apparent benefits of coffee may occur because it causes drinkers to move around more (exercise). Other drugs also do this, but usually with more side-effects. Reductions in all-cause mortality associated with coffee consumption are broadly distributed across cardiovascular disease, cancer, which qualitatively resemble the benefits of exercise. Increased testosterone is also an effect of regular exercise:
https://journals.bioscientifica.com/ec/article/6/5/306/35211...
by scythe - I feel that way about the endless studies showing fiber is important for health, too. Because there's no way studies re-confirm findings because they're revealing truth. It's definitely Big Leaf at work.by KPGv2
- > coffee addicts
I don't know if it's the word "addicts" that maybe doesn't have to be a negative, or if it's not the right word at all for "functional addicts", but I feel like the "addiction" people have to coffee is much more behavioral than chemical (although there is physiological withdrawal symptoms too), compared to other "harder" drugs like cocaine or heroin. The clear negative effects from long-term use is also a lot much evidence with one side of these, coffee not so much.
Not sure you have to cut back on something that you really enjoy, so much that you wanna do it every day, even if you get cranky when someone (sometimes you) ruin this ceremony for you. Why would you cut back when the biggest negative is spending 10-20EUR a month on some nice coffee you can consume every single morning?
- Either point out weaknesses in the study, or dubious funding behind it etc. Or just stick with saying that you prefer tea.
- I'm a good target market for pro-coffee writing, but this is just an observational study of a drinks habit. No one in the general public should have any interest in studies of this kind.
Maybe if you're deep in working in this research space it could help generate hypotheses for more meaningful research? But "we cross sectionally compared two groups with different behaviors and found they were different" is not really a result.
by zetazzed