What does your coffee do for you? Is it the team of oxen that drags your protesting consciousness into a new day? Does it lend you a kind of urban chic as you carry it from the train to your office? Is it the lubricant that oils the wheels of communication between you and a close friend? Coffee is many things to many of us but few would suspect that as it serves all of these functions it may also be performing a function in your nervous system that reduces your chances of developing multiple sclerosis (MS).
This has been highlighted in a new piece of research that involved data from two studies examining the link between coffee consumption and MS onset. What prompted the study was the knowledge that coffee can protect against other neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. MS is an autoimmune disease where the immune system generates inflammation that damages the myelin coating of nerve fibres.
For the first study Swedish researchers decided to look at life beyond the meatball and compare coffee consumption among 1,629 people with MS to 2,807 healthy controls. The second study came from the United States and involved 1,159 people with MS and 1,172 healthy controls. In both studies coffee consumption among the people with MS was recorded one year and five years prior to onset of MS. In the Swedish study coffee consumption was also recorded 10 years prior to onset.
Overall both studies showed that coffee drinking had a protective effect against the development of MS.
The Swedish study showed that people who did not drink coffee for one year were 1.5 times more likely to develop MS compared to those who drink six or more cups of coffee per day. People who did not drink coffee at the five and ten year intervals were also more likely to develop MS. In the US study the same relationship was found in that those who did not drink coffee over one year were 1.5 times more likely to develop MS than those who had four cups a day.
The likely reason for the link is that caffeine suppresses the production of cytokines that promote inflammation and so diminish the mechanism by which MS occurs. The problem of course is that 4-6 cups of coffee a day is a lot of coffee, it provides at least 400mg of caffeine (depending on how you have your coffee) and may increase the risk of anxiety, depression, restlessness, increased heart rate and muscle tremors.
As the researchers point out however, this may point to coffee being a useful treatment for people with MS in an attempt to reduce long term disability.
