Consumption of a dark roast coffee blend reduces DNA damage in humans • Hacker News Board

Re: Consumption of a dark roast coffee blend reduces DNA damage in humans

#31

Post by zeofig » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 10:43 PM UTC

jimmy1 wrote: post #14

nabla9 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is nice meta study of coffee and cancer risk (dna damage and cancer are probably linked). https://www.nature.com/articles/srep33711 > coffee intake was associated with reduced risk of oral, pharynx, liver, colon, prostate, endometrial cancer and melanoma and increased lung cancer risk. (Heh. Smokers drink nearly twice as much coffee as non-smokers. Smoking increases caffeine metabolism. I think this explains the…

To your parenthetical comment: May be unrelated, but totally anecdotal, smokers tend to drink a very light roast that is easily drinkable like a folgers or maxwell house, maybe a coffee shop light roast, like a Dunkin. I don't think smokers are downing cups of Starbucks dark blend and if they are god help their stomachs.

This is clearly the real reason smokers get cancer. They aren't drinking their dark roast.

Re: Consumption of a dark roast coffee blend reduces DNA damage in humans

#32

Post by mikekchar » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 10:45 PM UTC

jimmy1 wrote: post #14

nabla9 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is nice meta study of coffee and cancer risk (dna damage and cancer are probably linked). https://www.nature.com/articles/srep33711 > coffee intake was associated with reduced risk of oral, pharynx, liver, colon, prostate, endometrial cancer and melanoma and increased lung cancer risk. (Heh. Smokers drink nearly twice as much coffee as non-smokers. Smoking increases caffeine metabolism. I think this explains the…

To your parenthetical comment: May be unrelated, but totally anecdotal, smokers tend to drink a very light roast that is easily drinkable like a folgers or maxwell house, maybe a coffee shop light roast, like a Dunkin. I don't think smokers are downing cups of Starbucks dark blend and if they are god help their stomachs.

This is probably true in the US, but in Europe I bet you would find that smokers drink espresso (which is usually made with dark roast coffee). Even for "regular strength" black coffee, people tend to drink "americano", which is espresso diluted with water. In the UK, in particular, I'm astounded at the volume of dark roast coffee people drink in the morning.

Re: Consumption of a dark roast coffee blend reduces DNA damage in humans

#33

Post by eof » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 10:47 PM UTC

> consumed 500 ml of freshly brewed dark roast coffee blend per day,

half a liter per day of coffee is a lot! I wonder if they controlled for caffeine

some highlights from my reading:

- 372mg caffeine per day

- water-only group specifically avoided caffeine

- coffee/caffeine group had to abstain from all caffeine for 4 weeks before study (baseline to 300+mg a day is a LOT for someone with no tolerance)

- they base their claim of the 'darkness' of the roast mattering on other similar studies, with less pronounced results, that used lighter roasts.

"Among several previous studies of the effects of coffee consumption on DNA damage, only two were randomised controlled trials, with DNA breakage rather than oxidative modification of DNA bases analysed [23]. Bakuradze et al. [14] also studied the effects of coffee C21 consumption, after 4 weeks of intervention, and found a decrease of DNA strand breaks by 27% in comparison to the control group with water consumption (p<0.001). Misik et al. [22] studied a much shorter intervention period (5 days) and a different coffee type and used isolated lymphocytes. In comparison to C21, the coffee had an approximately twofold content of caffeoyl quinic acids and trigonelline and about half of N-methylpyridinium. Therefore, the coffee used by Misik et al. is a light/ medium roast type while we used here a dark roast blend. We assume that the different degree of roasting accounts for the different outcome observed. "

Re: Consumption of a dark roast coffee blend reduces DNA damage in humans

#34

Post by maxxxxx » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 10:48 PM UTC

tachyonbeam wrote: post #19

1_over_n wrote: post #15

"Funding This study has been supported by Tchibo GmbH, Hamburg, Germany." Tchibo is a German chain of coffee retailers and cafés known for its range of non-coffee products that change weekly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tchibo Number of locations 700 shops (Germany) 300 (rest of world) They might want to make some in-store claims about Dark Roast...

I'm generally sceptical of all studies about coffee for this very reason. There's a lot of bullshit studies around food and supplements funded with people with strongly vested interests in selling more product. It's a real problem. For any given supplement, you can often find multiple studies supporting its use and multiple studies saying it's harmful. When it comes to coffee specifically, if you listen to the studie…

It's the same with studies about alcohol. They seem to always fish for some positive effect and ignore all negative effects.

Re: Consumption of a dark roast coffee blend reduces DNA damage in humans

#35

Post by tracker1 » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 10:51 PM UTC

eof wrote: post #33

> consumed 500 ml of freshly brewed dark roast coffee blend per day, half a liter per day of coffee is a lot! I wonder if they controlled for caffeine some highlights from my reading: - 372mg caffeine per day - water-only group specifically avoided caffeine - coffee/caffeine group had to abstain from all caffeine for 4 weeks before study (baseline to 300+mg a day is a LOT for someone with no tolerance) - they base th…

It's 2-3 typical cups of coffee... 2 in the morning and one later in the day. Now, if it's laced with a ton of sugar or "sugar free" sweetener that metabolizes like sugar, that's different.

Re: Consumption of a dark roast coffee blend reduces DNA damage in humans

#36

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 10:54 PM UTC

maxxxxx wrote: post #34

tachyonbeam wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm generally sceptical of all studies about coffee for this very reason. There's a lot of bullshit studies around food and supplements funded with people with strongly vested interests in selling more product. It's a real problem. For any given supplement, you can often find multiple studies supporting its use and multiple studies saying it's harmful. When it comes to coffee specifically, if you listen to the studie…

It's the same with studies about alcohol. They seem to always fish for some positive effect and ignore all negative effects.

[deleted]

Re: Consumption of a dark roast coffee blend reduces DNA damage in humans

#37

Post by ilaksh » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 10:55 PM UTC

Symmetry wrote: post #18

devereaux wrote: post #11

Odd days: research shows coffee is good for you Even days: research shows coffee is bad for you

It's both good and bad for you depending on which health indicators you look at. People tend to treat "Coffee prevents cancer" and "Coffee raises blood pressure" as if they contradicted each other but really they don't. The whole thing is very dose dependant too. Correlationally life expectancy maxes out at around 3 cups per day but I doubt that's the causal maximum.

I don't buy it. I love coffee and caffeine in general but it's just a stimulant.

I personally believe the net effect is to make your body work harder to get through the day.

I think it's bad unless you were funded by the coffee industry.

Re: Consumption of a dark roast coffee blend reduces DNA damage in humans

#38

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 10:56 PM UTC

1_over_n wrote: post #15

"Funding This study has been supported by Tchibo GmbH, Hamburg, Germany." Tchibo is a German chain of coffee retailers and cafés known for its range of non-coffee products that change weekly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tchibo Number of locations 700 shops (Germany) 300 (rest of world) They might want to make some in-store claims about Dark Roast...

I'm already addicted to your foul dark energy swill, you don't need to sell it to me twice!

Re: Consumption of a dark roast coffee blend reduces DNA damage in humans

#39

Post by rhema » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 10:56 PM UTC

snazz wrote: post #29

emptybits wrote: post #12

I'm surprised (horrified?) that a control group's DNA deteriorates significantly enough in such a short trial to use as a comparison. #entropy

The study is likely useless since eight weeks total does not constitute long-term effects. You’d need to do this with a larger sample size over years to get reliable data.

8 weeks is not unusual for a study like this (randomized and controlled). Almost no study where researchers tell participants what to do will be longer. Epidemiological studies, of which there are many on coffee, do have more subjects over years, but rely on self-reported data.

Re: Consumption of a dark roast coffee blend reduces DNA damage in humans

#40

Post by stochastic_monk » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 10:57 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #25

jimmy1 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To your parenthetical comment: May be unrelated, but totally anecdotal, smokers tend to drink a very light roast that is easily drinkable like a folgers or maxwell house, maybe a coffee shop light roast, like a Dunkin. I don't think smokers are downing cups of Starbucks dark blend and if they are god help their stomachs.

Lighter roasts have more caffeine, because the roasting process damages the caffeine molecule.

Medium roasts have the most. With roast, both water evaporation and caffeine pyrolysis increase. Medium hits the maximum. I prefer very light roasts for the flavor.