Mark it on your calendars, folks. On this day, Tuesday, May Nineteenth, In The Year Of Our Lord Two Thousand And Twenty, I, Zac Cadwalader, of sound body and mind, have hereby performed my once-yearly task by informing you that coffee is maybe not always so good for you. Though it pains me to do, I am compelled to bring you “fair and balanced” coverage of all the coffee sciences by letting you know that a new study finds “excess coffee consumption a culprit for poor health.”
As reported by Science Daily, the new research is the product of Professor Elina Hyppönen, a genetic epidemiologist at the University of Southern Australia. For the study, researchers—led by Hyppönen—used data from over 300,000 individuals in the UK Biobank to find any “connections between genetically instrumented habitual coffee consumption and a full range of diseases.” Whereas most studies on the healthfulness of coffee take an observational approach, this “world’s first” study relies on genetics via “MR-PheWAS analysis” to determine the “true effects of coffee consumption against 1,117 clinical conditions.”
They found that habitual excessive coffee consumption, which Hyppönen established in previous research to be more than six cups a day, increased the risk of three diseases in particular: osteoarthritis, arthropathy, and obesity.
“The body generally sends powerful messages with respect to coffee consumption, so it’s imperative that individuals listen to these when consuming coffee,” Hyppönen states. “For people with a family history of osteoarthritis or arthritis, or for those who are worried about developing these conditions, these results should act as a cautionary message.”
One the bright side, though, the study also found moderate coffee consumption to be “mostly safe,” which is mostly good news.
So there you have it. Coffee, it’s not always good for you. This concludes my annual coffee poo-poo’ing article, now let’s never speak of it again.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.