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| If life "begins with coffee", will it also help you end later with coffee? |
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Caffeine shortens and coffee lengthens your telomeres - How's that possible?
Well, the most probable answer is that other substances in coffee, such as chlorogenic acid, ameliorate the negative effects caffeine will have on the length of your telomeres.
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| Figure 1: The caffeine intake is negatively associated with the length of the telomeres according to the data from 5826 adults from NHANES (1999–2002) in both coffee drinkers and abstainers (Tucker. 2017). |
- each 100 mg of caffeine consumed by coffee drinkers was associated with telomeres that were 36.7 base pairs shorter than the cohort average (F = 9.0, P = 0.0054), while
- each 100 mg of caffeine consumed by non-coffee drinkers was associated with telomeres that were 40.0 base pairs shorter (F = 8.5, P = 0.0067).
This observation alone can't explain that coffee intake, in general, was positively related to telomere length (F = 12.6, P = 0.0013), independent of the covariates. If we take into consideration that coffee is not the only source of caffeine in the average American's diet, however, another factor that may interfere with the telomere length emerges: sodas, energy drinks & co.
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| A short telomere length correlates with an increased risk of mortality and with the (subjectively) rated health status of older subjects in Njajou (2009). |
Telomeres don't just count in the years before you die, though, Njajou et al. (2009) showed that telomere length is also predictive of years of healthy life, too. Eventually, the research on the predictive accuracy of telomere length on life expectancy and/or health is yet in its infancy.
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| Figure 2: Caffeine intake (mg/d) from beverages and foods by age group, NHANES 2011–2012 (Drewnowski. 2016) |
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| While caffeine is the #1 ingredient in energy drinks, taurine has recently emerged as more important contributor to their effects than everybody may have thought | learn more |
Accordingly, the most important thing to remember is that the study at hand adds to the evidence that your coffee addiction (if kept within reasonable limits <10 cups/day) will positively affect your telomere length and could thus even have life-extending effects.
The fact that pertinent epidemiological studies, like the one at hand, consistently show beneficial effects of caffeinated coffee and taking into account that Takahashi, et al. (2017) showed only recently that, in a rodent model, caffeine adds to the anti-aging effects of coffee, is the second thing you should remember.
The one thing you should not do, however, is to blame sugar for the surprising difference between the telomere-lengthening effect of caffeine intake and coffee that was observed in the study at hand. After all, Figure 2 should remind you that the vast majority of caffeine comes from coffee and tea, and only small quantities from sugary soda & co | Comment on Facebook!
- Drewnowski, Adam, and Colin D. Rehm. "Sources of caffeine in diets of US children and adults: Trends by beverage type and purchase location." Nutrients 8.3 (2016): 154.
- Frary, Carol D., Rachel K. Johnson, and Min Qi Wang. "Food sources and intakes of caffeine in the diets of persons in the United States." Journal of the American Dietetic Association 105.1 (2005): 110-113.
- Lee, J. Y., et al. "Association between dietary patterns in the remote past and telomere length." European journal of clinical nutrition 69.9 (2015): 1048-1052.
- Liu, Jason J., et al. "Coffee Consumption Is Positively Associated with Longer Leukocyte Telomere Length in the Nurses’ Health Study." The Journal of nutrition 146.7 (2016): 1373-1378.
- Njajou, Omer T., et al. "Association between telomere length, specific causes of death, and years of healthy life in health, aging, and body composition, a population-based cohort study." The Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences 64.8 (2009): 860-864.
- Tucker, Larry A. "Caffeine consumption and telomere length in men and women of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES)." Nutrition & Metabolism 14.1 (2017): 10.
- Weischer, Maren, et al. "Short telomere length, myocardial infarction, ischemic heart disease, and early death." Arteriosclerosis, thrombosis, and vascular biology 32.3 (2012): 822-829.