As a connoisseur of ye olde vino and an equal hypochondriac, I am permanently on war-and-peace negotiations with my liver. Some days we speak, some days we defy each other, sometimes there is severe abuse (I go on a booze binge with my friends, and in turn my liver screws me over by shutting down my fat processing, which is why I may have ballooned a little over the past two years). As I am a girl and paranoid about my body fat percentage, I usually get a massive guilt trip and then drink nothing but cranberry juice and munch Milk thistle pills for days after. And one likes to think long term, cos one would not like one’s liver to pack it in entirely one day. Sadly, the call of Bacchus is way too strong sometimes. Be it for the fun factor, the social lubrication (how wrong does that sound?!), the de-stress factor or the hug replacement.
Now we got this new book in the shop, called “101 Foods that could save your life” by David Grotto (note the use of “could” instead of “will” – someone is saving their ass!)
And I kid you not, this is what it says about coffee:
“In a study of more than 125,000 people, one cup of coffee per day cut the risk of alcoholic cirrhosis by 20 per cent. Four cups per day reduced the risk by 80 per cent.” (p107)
Said study is listed in the appendix as
So in other words, I can drink myself into a coma on a daily basis if only I have five cups of coffee the day after, and my liver will be fine and dandy? The countrywide problem of alcohol-related liver disease can be solved, as long as the alcohol binge is followed by a coffee binge?
I’d be more than happy to believe that, but unfortunately, it just sounds too good to be true. And if it is true, why hasn’t it hit the newspaper headlines on a grand scale yet?
No comments:
Post a Comment