For those coffee and or single malt enthusiasts like myself
that love cycling distances, here's some good news for a
change.
Got this from another poster in the Alt-Coffee db. Not meant
to offend or sell anything, just information.
------------------------------
From the NY Times:
Prevention: Easing Liver Damage With a Dose of Coffee
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Published: June 13, 2006
Drinking coffee may protect against the type of liver disease
caused
by excessive alcohol intake, researchers have found.
In a population of more than 125,000 members of a prepaid
health care
plan, scientists found 199 with diagnoses of liver cirrhosis
caused by
alcohol abuse. The subjects were examined beginning in 1978,
and they
were followed for an average of more than 14 years. Their
coffee
drinking and other dietary and health habits were established
using
interviews and questionnaires.
Compared with people who never drank coffee, those who drank
one cup a
day or less were about 30 percent less likely to develop
alcoholic
cirrhosis. The more coffee they drank, the lower the risk. At
one to
three cups per day, the risk was lowered by 40 percent, and
those who
drank more than four cups a day reduced their risk by 80
percent.
Coffee had no statistically significant effect on the risk for
nonalcoholic cirrhosis.
Long-term alcohol abuse is the most common cause of liver
cirrhosis in
industrialized countries, according to background information
in the
article, which was published yesterday in Archives of Internal
Medicine.
"Not everything enjoyable is bad for you," said Dr. Arthur L.
Klatsky,
the study's lead author and a cardiologist with the Kaiser
Permanente
Medical Care Program in Oakland, Calif. "Moderate coffee
drinking has
no net ill effects on health."
The researchers are unsure what ingredient in coffee is at
work, but
since tea drinking offered no protection against either form
of the
disease, they concluded that caffeine was not responsible for
the
effect.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/13/health/13prev.html?_r=1
&oref=login