Coffee vs Frailty!

We have written before about the health benefits (and risks) of coffee; for most people, the benefits far outweigh the risks, but individual cases may vary:

The Bitter Truth About Coffee (or is it?) ← this is a mythbusting edition

Speaking of bitterness; coffee has abundant polyphenols, which means…

• Coffee is the world’s biggest source of antioxidants
• 65% reduced risk of Alzheimer’s for coffee-drinkers
• 67% reduced risk of type 2 diabetes for coffee-drinkers
• 43% reduced risk of liver cancer for coffee-drinkers
• 53% reduced suicide risk for coffee-drinkers

See also: Why Bitter Is Better: Enjoy Bitter Foods For Your Heart & Brain ← while it says foods in the title, this does cover coffee too.

For mythbusting on caffeine specifically, enjoy: Caffeine: Cognitive Enhancer Or Brain-Wrecker?

There are also gut health benefits from drinking coffee, and what’s good for our gut is invariably good for our heart and brain:

Coffee & Your Gut ← gut bacteria do not, by the way, have a preference about how you make your coffee or whether it is caffeinated or not

And Now The Latest Research: Strong Coffee, Strong Body?

A team of researchers (Dr. Mette van der Linden et al.) have examined the relationship between coffee-drinking and frailty, as part of a longitudinal (7-year) study of aging.

In a nutshell, what they found was:

❝higher habitual coffee consumption is associated with lower odds of frailty❞

In a bigger nutshell (perhaps a coffee cup), their results can be summarized:

• Drinking more than 6 cups of coffee per day is also associated with significantly lower odds of frailty, compared to 0–2 cups per day.
• Drinking more than 4–6 cups of coffee per day is also linked to significantly lower odds of frailty, compared to 0–2 cups per day.
• Drinking more than 2–4 cups of coffee per day is linked to a significantly lower risk of developing frailty after 7 years, compared to 0–2 cups per day.
• Coffee consumption of more than 2–4 cups per day is associated with significantly lower odds of pre-frailty, compared to 0–2 cups per day.

Now, there are some important things to bear in mind, especially for American readers:

• This was a Dutch study, so by “a cup” they mean 125ml, which is half what is called a cup the US (the measurement is specified in the paper)
• However, because in Europe we mostly don’t elongate our coffees with as much water as in the US, those cups are stronger than a cup of coffee would be in the US on average
• Thus, when they say “a cup of coffee”, actually it contains about the same amount of coffee as an American cup of coffee, just, it takes up less space because there’s less hot water added
• In other words, despite the translatlantic differences, 1 cup of coffee = 1 cup of coffee, if we’re looking at how much actual coffee is present, rather than the physical size.

Noteably, it is the coffee itself that is important, not the caffeine. So, strong coffee is better than weak coffee, but decaffeinated is as good, if not better:

❝Stratification of the results by type of coffee (decaffeinated vs. caffeinated) showed that a higher consumption of decaffeinated coffee was associated with a lower hazard of pre-frailty or frailty after three years, while higher consumption of caffeinated coffee was not associated with pre-frailty or frailty incidence.❞

You may be wondering: how is that “as good if not better”; that is clearly better?

The thing here is that this stratification of results demonstrates correlation, but does not make causation clear. Whenever a portion of a study population is abstaining from some substance, it’s important to examine why.

Otherwise, you get silly results like “alcohol is protective against heart disease” when the truth is you looked at former heavy drinkers who quit, vs current light drinkers, noted the former category died of heart disease more often, and came to the conclusion that light drinking is protective, when the reality is that the former heavy drinking was ruinous and the current light drinking was only relatively less bad (for more details on that, see: Are You Making This Alcohol Mistake?).

So, it’s possible that decaffeinated coffee is more strongly protective against frailty than caffeinated, or it could be that the kind of people who switched to decaffeinated coffee were the kind of people who were taking more care of their health in general, or it could be another reason entirely.

What that stats do show, unequivocally, is that both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee are strongly associated with reduced frailty risk, in a dose-dependent fashion (i.e. more coffee = less frailty).

There is, doubtlessly, a cap on that (i.e. you probably cannot drink 30 cups of coffee per day and expect to get 30x the reduction in frailty risk), but whatever the cap is, this study didn’t find it, and topped it off at “and more than 6 cups of coffee per day was associated with the least frailty”.

You can read the paper in full, here:

Habitual coffee consumption and risk of frailty in later life: the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam

Not a fan of coffee?

If you’re not a fan of coffee, but also not a fan of frailty, fear not; there is a supplement option available:

Green Coffee Bean Extract: Coffee Benefits Without The Coffee?

Enjoy!