Thursday, July 27, 2006

Great news about coffee! No wonder I am still alive!

Rarely does the mainstream media contain much to smile about. However, the article below from the British Guardian, reprinted in the Sydney Morning Herald in June, is great news indeed!

Scientists have discovered that drinking large quantities of coffee stops liver rot in big drinkers! And the more coffee you drink, the better it works! Fantastic! This explains why I am still alive!

So, health-freaks, what do you have to say for yourselves now? "Oh, you shouldn't drink so much, it'll damage your liver" "Oh, don't you know how terrible it is for your health to drink four pots of coffee a day ". Blah fucking blah. How stupid do you feel now, eh, with your bloody herbal tea and your... what ever it is people who don't drink alcohol consume. Air. (And that stuff will kill you, by the way.)

It isn't even that I particularly like my liver. We really don't get on. I think it is the age difference. I'm 28, my liver is on the pension.

However, unfortunately, scientists are yet to find a way to live without one. So this is positive news. It makes sense as well. It is lifes natural rhythm. Coffee all day. Beer all night. Repeat. Now science has proven it.


Coffee stops liver rot in big drinkers

June 14, 2006

DRINKING coffee could help protect you from liver disease caused by alcohol, research shows.

People who drink one cup of coffee a day are 20 per cent less likely to suffer alcoholic cirrhosis than those who drink none.

And the protective effect increases with the more coffee you have: those who drink two or three cups a day are 40 per cent less likely to suffer cirrhosis, while people who drink four or more cups are 80 per cent less likely to get the disease.

The findings were conducted by researchers at the Kaiser Permanente health care organisation in California, and published in the US journal Archives of Internal Medicine.

The link between coffee and cirrhosis was first reported by Kaiser Permanente researchers in 1993, but this new study - which followed 125,000 people over 22 years - "solidifies the association", said Arthur Klatsky, the head researcher.

He said: "Consuming coffee seems to have some protective benefits against alcoholic cirrhosis, and the more coffee a person consumes the less risk they seem to have of being hospitalised or dying of alcoholic cirrhosis. [But] we did not see a similar protective association between coffee and non-alcoholic cirrhosis."

The researchers studied people who underwent a medical examination between 1978 and 1985 and who, at the time, had no diagnosed liver disease. Participants filled out a questionnaire detailing how much alcohol, coffee and tea they drank daily.

By the end of 2001, 330 of them had been diagnosed with liver disease, including 199 with alcoholic cirrhosis, a condition where heavy drinking causes progressive damage and impaired function of the liver.

Blood tests conducted on the heaviest drinkers confirmed that those who enjoyed coffee were less likely to have high levels of enzymes in the liver - a key indicator of liver damage. But drinking tea had no effect, suggesting the ingredient that protects against cirrhosis is not caffeine.

The Guardian

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