Study Shows Benefits of Coffee for Liver Health

CLEVELAND - More good news for coffee lovers.

A recent study shows higher coffee consumption was associated with lower risks of cirrhosis, liver cancer and liver-related death.

“This study was unique in a couple of different ways. The first of which is it's very large population, almost 400,000 individuals that have been followed prospectively, meaning over an extended period of time. And that period of time exceeds 10 years," said Nizar Zein, MD, hepatologist at Cleveland Clinic.

Dr. Zein was not involved with the study but says another unique factor was that participants underwent MRIs and blood tests.

So, what exactly did the findings show?

It appears people who drank five or more cups of coffee per day had a 32% lower risk of cirrhosis, a 47% lower risk of liver cancer and a 42% lower risk of liver-related death.

That was compared to those who didn’t drink coffee.

Researchers noted, however, that benefits could be seen with just a cup or two per day.

Dr. Zein adds that coffee alone is not sufficient to improve liver health as there are many other lifestyle changes that are necessary.

“If you want to put coffee into perspective, I would say avoidance of alcohol, ultra processed food, and sugary food on one hand. On the other hand, physical activity, particularly muscle resistance type of exercise, has shown to decrease the degree of liver fat and liver injury, along with taking coffee along the way. So, it's not by itself a treatment, but it's part of all the lifestyle modification that one can do to prevent future liver disease," he elaborated.

Dr. Zein said another interesting discovery was it didn’t matter if the coffee was caffeinated or not, which indicates that it’s not the caffeine helping with liver health but the coffee itself.

Why exactly that is remains unclear.