Habitual coffee intake shapes the microbiome, modifies physiology and cognition(www.nature.com)
100 pointsby scubakid3 hours ago10 comments
  • TazeTSchnitzel5 minutes ago
    After habitually consuming caffeine (not in coffee form) daily, usually multiple times a day, for more than a decade, a horrible mental health incident happened to me that forced me to stop it for a while. Afterwards I didn't resume the habit, and so I no longer have a tolerance.

    This has let me evaluate what caffeine does with fresh eyes, so to say, because I can now consume it occasionally while having many non-caffeinated days to compare to. It's a profoundly psychoactive substance and does a lot of things to cognition. I guess I have decided I don't enjoy how it feels, having previously been dependent on it.

    • readthenotes1a few seconds ago
      Notably, the article is looking at coffee, both caffeinated and decaffeinated. There is a lot more to coffee than just caffeine...
  • testemailfordg2an hour ago
    Funded by the Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee (ISIC) — an industry body — which is a notable conflict of interest the authors disclose but don't extensively discuss
    • rapidaneurism42 minutes ago
      It does not sound like an outcome that big coffee paid for it to be so:

      Behaviourally, coffee drinkers exhibited greater impulsivity and emotional reactivity, whereas non-coffee drinkers demonstrated better memory performance.

    • carabiner9 minutes ago
      Every damn time, for chocolate, coffee, and red wine "studies."
  • pinkmuffinere2 hours ago
    I’m super interested in this sort of study! However, it looks like n=62 here, which I think weakens the results —they’re probably just useful as suggestions of possible effects. Also, any food is expected to have similar effects on the microbiome. They didn’t test caffeine in isolation. In some ways that’s better (I don’t consume caffeine in isolation), but in some ways that’s less useful (it’s possible you get similar results from many random vegetables)
    • bhaneyan hour ago
      > They didn’t test caffeine in isolation

      But they did test both caffeinated and uncaffeinated coffee, and found the same effects in both, indicating that the effect is caused by something in coffee other than the caffeine

      • krigean hour ago
        Doesn't decaf also contain caffeine, just a lot less of it?
      • anon8487362841 minutes ago
        Typical extraction yield is 18-20%. For a 20g dose that's 4g of material consumed, or about 30 individual beans.

        I wonder if you could find similar effects with 4g or broccoli sprouts, or garlic, or ginger, or cumin seed, shiitake mushroom, seaweed, soursop leaf, or...

    • sixtyjan hour ago
      In 1995, NASA did spiders experiment. Caffeine is a siginificant impulsivity trigger. :)

      https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/nasa-spiders-drugs-experime...

      • jayd1636 minutes ago
        Nice web, Mr. Crack spider.
  • satvikpendem2 hours ago
    What's cool is this effect exists even in decaf coffee, as someone who primarily drinks decaf black, for flavor and for a good night's rest as I'm sensitive to caffeine.
  • getnormality2 hours ago
    Coffee modifies physiology and cognition? You're telling me this for the first time.
    • aleccoan hour ago
      The paper is about previously unknown ways coffee affects the body.
    • ButlerianJihad2 hours ago
      I was so surprised at this headline that I nearly leapt out of my chair!
      • jonplackett25 minutes ago
        But it says it’s the same for decaf. That is more interesting
    • triage80042 hours ago
      Humans known since 45 minutes after first drink
  • wjnc2 hours ago
    I have not much followed the science of gut microbiome and psychology. Is this really going where this article is pointing? That we can tease out causation in foods and habits via gut microbiome towards behavior and psychology? Pretty rad.
    • chneuan hour ago
      There's a decent amount of research going into the hormones that our GI biome produce and how it affects us. Our body has a few different biomes and they all seem to play somewhat important roles.
    • colechristensen2 hours ago
      Yeah there's nontrivial evidence that among other things, the complex community living inside you manipulates your brain.
      • ButlerianJihad2 hours ago
        My psychiatrists agree that “hallucination” (in lay terms: “hearing voices” or “seeing things”) only refers to things that aren’t real.
  • reedf12 hours ago
    At least subjectively, coffee seems to help my memory. But maybe that's why I started drinking coffee?

    I would probably drop coffee it was proven to have negative effects on memory.

    • bboozzoo2 hours ago
      > But maybe that's why I started drinking coffee?

      you don't remember why, do you?

  • 6LLvveMx2koXfwn2 hours ago
    "These findings reveal previously unrecognised effects of coffee on the microbiota–gut–brain axis, suggesting that microbiome profiles could potentially predict coffee consumption patterns", or, perhaps, just ask the patient?
    • raincole2 hours ago
      Could you elaborate on how to interpret your comment without it leading to anti-intellectualism?
    • colechristensen2 hours ago
      You are missing the point.

      If you can predict someone's coffee intake based on testing of their microbiome then you've proven that coffee intake has predictable effects on the microbiome.

      The important part isn't predicting coffee use, it's just the proof that there's you can predict and perhaps control in the opposite direction leading to more research.

  • poly2it2 hours ago
    > ... reintroduction triggered acute microbiome changes independent of caffeine.

    This sounds interesting. I've never really considered the constituents of coffee other than caffeine and what unique effects they may bring.

    I wonder if I would experience behavioral effects if I replaced my coffee intake with caffeinated non-coffee drinks or pills?

    • kulahanan hour ago
      Studies seem to indicate that coffee is at least as healthy, if not healthier than tea, and I have not heard this about caffeine specifically (aka the same effects coming from pills or energy drinks).

      One fun fact: we still haven’t figured out why coffee makes us poop. We’ve studied every chemical in there and can’t seem to find a link, but the association is uh… well-known.

  • neya2 hours ago
    The only good thing that keeps me from collapsing into a state of limbo is coffee and now, even that's bad (seems more like a mixed bag, but still)? Sigh.
    • bee_rider2 hours ago
      There have been positive and negative reports for a long long time. If coffee was going to kill us, I’d certainly have died in school!
    • cyberpunkan hour ago
      Maybe I have some neurological issue or something but whenever I quit coffee I find it extremely difficult to maintain any kind of motivation to sit in an open plan office and code. Coffee makes me a worker bee, I can understand why employers give it away for free.

      So, the coffee stays for now.

      • neya8 minutes ago
        Yeah, exactly. I can totally relate to this. I have actually monitored my productivity on an excel sheet and the days with coffee win by a large margin. I am not sure if it's withdrawal symptoms on the days without, though.
    • kulahanan hour ago
      Coffee in general is unreasonably healthy as a beverage. The overwhelming majority of science agrees it’s a quality health drink.
    • anon84873628an hour ago
      Don't fret. You're allowed to enjoy things that aren't part of the scientific reductionist longevity influencer lifestyle fad :)
      • antonvs36 minutes ago
        Nitpick: What you’re referring to is not scientific.