Coffee is good for your liver. There have been very many studies attesting to that fact. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for more. And in a new expansive meta-analysis, coffee has been found to have a wide range of health benefits and protective properties pertaining to the livers.
As reported by News Medical, the latest study was published in the journal Biochemical Pharmacology, where researchers collated decades’ worth of research on coffee’s effect on the liver. They include everything from population studies to molecular experiments, with researchers examining the individual effects of five health properties off coffee: antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antifibrotic, metabolism-modulating, and gut microbiota-balancing.
From the collected data, they found that regular coffee drinkers were associated with a 29% decrease in metabolic disfunction-associated steatotic liver disease, which is the “most common chronic liver condition worldwide.” And for hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common form of liver cancer, the meta-analysis found the risk to drop by 40%. The benefits were proportional to daily cups consumed, with the maximum protection topping out at three or more cups.
When drilling into the data on the individual health properties, researchers found their effects to be synergistic, with many of them, like caffeine and chlorogenic acids, working together to create greater results than the sum of what they would individually.
The role of the liver in our body is to filter toxins, process nutrients, and synthesize proteins. But the stresses of modern life—viral infections, alcohol consumption, metabolic disorders, etc—create increased stress on the vital organ, which has led to a spike in liver disease. And while there are treatments in place for some forms of liver disease, the spike has led many researchers to seek out preventative measures. Thus coffee. Far from a cure, as part of a healthy lifestyle, coffee offers a “simple, accessible, and effective dietary strategy for mitigating liver damage.”
Still, the findings are purely observational, so no causal relation has yet to be established. But the preponderance of evidence points to coffee being a bit of a precautionary panacea for your liver.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
