Drinking Coffee Can Protect Your Liver from Diseases

Woo-hoo! Good news for all coffee lovers over there. Drinking coffee not only reduces stress and increases your mood but also protects your liver! Yes, you read it right. Recent research says that drinking coffee can lower the risk of liver disease. 

According to the study published in BMC public health on June 22, regular coffee consumption lowers the risk of chronic disease, fatty liver disease, and liver cancer. The study says drinking 3-4 cups of coffee per day gives you great benefits and it’s observed in different coffee varieties such as instant, caffeinated, decaffeinated, or ground. But it is said that coffee from ground beans is more beneficial than instant coffee. 

Chronic Liver Disease 

Chronic liver diseases are on the rise globally. It is said in the next 20 years people with two or more chronic conditions might almost double to 10 million. Now 2 million chronic deaths occur of which 1 million people die because of cirrhosis, viral hepatitis, and hepatocellular carcinoma. All these conditions are caused by consuming alcohol, being overweight, or diabetes. Liver problems are widely found in low-income countries as medical facilities are less available and it is on the rise in countries like sub-Saharan Africa, Central, and South America, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia.  

Liver Disease and Study 

Nearly 62% of Americans drink coffee every day and the average coffee drinker consumes three cups of coffee per day. The researcher used health data of 494,585 people from the UK Biobank. The participants were followed for an average of 10.7 years and monitored for the development of chronic liver disease and its related conditions. 54.5 percent of the participants were female and 94 percent were white and the mean age of the participants was 58. In that participant’s group, 78 percent i.e 384,818 were coffee drinkers who drank an average of two cups a day, and 22 percent i.e 109,767 were not coffee drinkers. In the coffee drinkers group, 55 percent drank instant coffee and 23 percent drank ground coffee and 19 percent drank decaf coffee. 

At the end of the study period, there were 3,600 cases of chronic liver disease including 301 deaths and 5,439 cases of chronic liver disease, and 184 cases of hepatocellular carcinoma. To know about the impact of coffee on liver disease, the researchers took into account factors like smoking status, diabetes, body mass index (BMI), ethnicity, and alcohol consumption. When the researchers compared the coffee drinkers with those who did not consume coffee they found out that 21% of the coffee drinkers were less likely to develop chronic disease and 19% of coffee drinkers had a reduced risk of developing chronic or fatty liver disease and 49% less reduced risk of death from chronic liver disease. It is also found that people who drank coffee from ground beans had a great impact in reducing risk. 

Researchers say that every coffee variety is associated with a reduced risk of developing and dying from chronic disorders. The study also stresses saying that people should improve their liver health not just by drinking coffee but also by maintaining weight and eating nutritious food.