Coffee Is
Generally Heart-Friendly
But it may
be linked to a slight rise in high blood pressure, researchers say
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
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