What the latest coffee study REALLY says: Coffee is still good for you

In spite of the fact that the media is really trying to sir up some sort of controversy regarding the latest coffee study, you should know you have nothing to worry about. The latest study shows that the bodies of 1/2 of the 2,014 people in the study (all of whom have already had a heart attack), are slow at getting rid of caffeine and that might have had something to do with their heart attack.

The processing of caffeine is done in the body by an enzyme, called cytochrome. Lets look at what the study found:

• Carriers of the 'slow' form of the gene (cytochrome) who drank two to three cups of coffee a day had a 36% increased risk of heart attack, compared to those who drank less than one cup a day.
  

You might want to ask yourself why they didn't compare the risk of slow processors vs. normal processors when they drank the same amount of coffee. They did, but there was a reduced risk of heart attack for everyone...and that sort of thing doesn't make good headlines.

This comparison is like saying "Slow caffeine processors who were forced to run 2-3 miles had a 36% higher risk of heart attack than normal caffeine processors who were forced to run less than one mile." What can we get from that? Not much. This explains why the head researcher said, " It appears that one cup a day is not associated with any harm, regardless of your genetic make-up." Well stated, but actually, there's more to it than that.

Here are the statistics:

Coffee consumption (cups)
Group	Less than 1	1	2 to 3	4 or more
Slow Gene Carriers	1	0.99	1.36	1.64
Fast Gene Carriers	1	0.75	0.78	0.99

Now, I'm no statistician, but hey!, it looks to me like the fast carriers had a decreased risk of heart attack compared to the control group up to and including 4 or more cups of coffee! And the slow carriers also benefited (minimally) from the first cup of coffee. Hmmm... Yet here are the (mostly sensationalistic) headlines from the news:

Coffee-Gene Interaction Raises Heart Attack Risk - CNN

Study: Coffee raises, lowers heart attack risk - News 8 Austin, TX

Coffee may brew heart attacks - Newsday, NY

Enjoy that next cup of coffee: it may be your last - Times Online, UK

Drinking regular coffee may be linked to heart attack, study says - Toledo Blade, OH - 3 hours ago

Coffee hazard linked to genes - Toronto Star, Canada

The Austin News 8 article, was the first one I found that mentioned the lower risk:

"Surprisingly, what we found was that in individuals under 50 years of age who were fast metabolizers, had the fast version of this gene, consumption of as little as one to three cups a day was associated with a lower risk of heart disease ," El-Sohemy said."

According to Google news, of the 287 news articles about this study, only 27 (9.40% - Hey, now there's math I can do! ) mentioned the "lower risk".