Coffee
Is Generally Heart-Friendly
Coffee drinkers can take heart from a series of
studies presented this week at American Heart Association conferences in San
Francisco. For example, coffee drinkers appear to have a lower risk of
hospitalization for abnormal heart rhythms. And there's no indication that
having a few cups every day increases the risk of atherosclerosis, the
thickening of blood vessel walls that can lead to heart attacks and other
problems. What's more, something in coffee other than caffeine might be
responsible for a reduced risk of diabetes for women who regularly imbibe java.
But it may be linked to a slight rise in high blood pressure
The heart rhythm research looked at the rate at which
130,054 members of the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program were hospitalized
for heart rhythm disturbances. About 2 percent of them had hospital stays
because of such abnormalities, the most common being atrial fibrillation. But
the risk was 18 percent lower for those who reported drinking four or more cups
of coffee a day, compared to those who didn't drink coffee, said Dr. Arthur
Klatsky, a senior consultant in cardiology for the program, who led the study.
"It might be a surprise, because coffee does give
some people the jitters," Klatsky said. "And I don't think we're
ready to tell people they should drink coffee to prevent heart rhythm
problems."
The study didn't offer any reason why coffee might
reduce heart rhythm problems, Klatsky said. "It could be that coffee
drinkers have better diets or exercise more. We can't say for sure that it
might not be related to minor heart rhythm problems that don't require
hospitalization."
The bottom line: "Coffee drinkers don't have to
quit because they have heart rhythm problems," Klatsky said. "That's
about as far as we can go."
Another study that has followed more than 3,000 men and
women for 20 years found no association between coffee consumption and
atherosclerosis for just about every demographic group -- men and women, blacks
and whites, smokers and nonsmokers. Participants in the study included people
whose coffee consumption ranged from none to more than four cups a day.
The third study, based on a report from the long-running
Women's Health Study, provided a possible explanation for a lower incidence of
type 2 diabetes -- the kind that generally develops later in life -- among
coffee drinkers. Researchers compared 359 post-menopausal women newly diagnosed
with type 2 diabetes and 359 women without the disease. They found that women
who drank four or more cups of caffeinated coffee a day had a 56 percent lower
risk of developing the condition than those who did not drink coffee.
That reduced risk appears to be due to the effects of
caffeine on a protein that binds to sex hormones, said Dr. Atsushi Goto, of the
University of California, Los Angeles, who presented the report. But the
finding is preliminary and requires further study, Goto added.
The report linking consumption of one to three cups of
coffee a day with a slightly increased risk of high blood pressure came from
Dr. Liwei Chen, assistant professor of epidemiology at the Louisiana State
University School of Public Health, using data from six studies that included
more than 172,000 participants.
"Based on our results, long-term coffee drinking
might be a risk factor for hypertension, but the effect is very moderate,"
Chen said. "We definitely need more research and evidence to clarify our
findings based on the meta-analysis of published prospective studies.
Meanwhile, I think it is important for people to consider lowering their coffee
drinking if they are concerned about their blood pressure."
คำศัพท์
Abnormalities (n) ความผิดปกติ
Atherosclerosis (n) โรคหลอดเลือดแดงแข็ง
Consumption (n) การบริโภค
Diabetes (n) โรคเบาหวาน
Diagnose (v) วินิจฉัยโรค
Heart attacks (n) ภาวะกล้ามเนื้อหัวใจตายเฉียบพลัน
สาเหตุเกิดจากหลอดเลือดไปเลี้ยงกล้ามเนื้อหัวใจอุดตัน
Hypertension (n) โรคความดันโลหิตสูง
Moderate (adj.) ปานกลาง
Participants (n) ผู้เข้าร่วม
Researchers (n) นักวิจัย
Rhythm disturbances (n) หัวใจเต้นผิดจังหวะ
