Nutrition Videos

Hi! I'm Stelios Pantazis. I'm a doctor and I specialize in medical nutrition and metabolic disorders. Today, I'd like to talk about the relationship between coffee and atrial fibrillation, a heart rhythm disorder. If you've been watching this channel for a long time, you've certainly heard me complain that I can't stand coffee. I'm one of the few unlucky people to whom coffee causes great agitation, so I can't even drink decaffeinated coffee. In fact, I've thought that if there was a drug that I'd take once a day in a tablet that would allow me to drink coffee without becoming agitated, I'd take it. I'd take one pill every day only to be able to drink coffee. Despite any possible side-effects. Unfortunately, I haven't discovered such a pill yet. If you have something to suggest, write it in the comments, because I may try it. So this is why I'm a bit jealous of people that drink coffee and it doesn't bother them. But this jealousy does not become bitterness, and when I see something good about coffee, I always share it with you. Many people believe that all things that give us some pleasure have a dark side too. If there's one thing that does not confirm this belief, it's coffee. No matter how much we've studied coffee, we haven't found that it causes any damage. Fortunately, this is confirmed once more in the study I'm presenting today. We've seen in previous videos that coffee reduces the risk of some types of cancer, the risk of diabetes, as well as the risk of death of any cause. The only thing that concerned us was if coffee affects heart rhythm. Even today, some cardiological societies all over the world recommend the avoidance of coffee to people with heart rhythm disorders. Moreover, you may have heard from some cardiologists that if you suffer from tachycardia or feel fluttering in the chest, you'd better avoid coffee. It seems that a study published recently supports exactly the opposite. Namely, that drinking coffee protects the heart from arrhythmia, especially atrial fibrillation, its most common form. This study was based on data from 400,000 people in Great Britain. The design of the study was rather simple. The many questions answered by the participants in the study included the question "How many cups of coffee do you drink per day?" They then monitored a database to find out how many of the 400,000 suffered from atrial fibrillation in the following five years. The results showed that the more coffee a person drank, the lower the chances that they'd be diagnosed with atrial fibrillation. Even the persons that drank five to six cups of coffee per day were more protected compared to those that drank four cups of coffee per day. This is really good news for people that drink coffee, and I'm sure most of you drink coffee, and that's good for you, because it seems that studies confirm again and again that coffee is good for your health. On the other hand, don't forget that no matter how good this study was, it's not ideal. There are two reasons for that. First, people that drink much coffee may be protected from arrhythmia for the same reason they're so tolerant of caffeine. Without going into technical details and boring you, I mean that people that metabolize caffeine quickly and can drink five to six cups of coffee per day may metabolize other toxic substances equally quickly too, and this may be the reason they're protected from atrial fibrillation. Second, this is a monitoring study, which means that the participants drink coffee voluntarily. It's like carrying out a study to find out if a drug reduces arrhythmia and saying "Those that want to take the drug will go to group A, "while those that don't will go to group B and take the placebo." This would certainly cause problems in the data analysis. I don't want to confuse you, but as a scientist, I have to present the whole truth. But I admit that after this study, I feel really comfortable to recommend and praise drinking coffee, even to people suffering from heart rhythm disorders, which I've hesitated to do until now. Therefore, if you drink coffee, continue enjoying it. The most reliable data we've had by now on coffee are almost exclusively encouraging. If you thought this was interesting, please give us a thumbs up. Share it with people who you think might find it interesting and subscribe to our channel in order to get notified when we upload a video. You can also suggest subjects in the comment section. Thank you very much!