Java: It'll Cure What Ails Ya

The mystery of my healthy liver is solved.

Now...I'm by no means an alcoholic (I know, denial is the first stage. Shh.) I have friends who are borderline alcoholics, and I've had family members who were alcoholics. So I definitely know what the symptoms are, and I'm happy to say I don't have them.

But I can hold my own with the best of them. Just as long as it's a 500 meter race, not a 10k marathon.

Of course, I've always been compared to my friends and their alcohol intake. And I apologize for the obvious stereotyping here, but most of my friends are asian. And they can't drink for shit. Oh sure, they'll drink a lot - but it goes in, they turn red, and after that it's just a question of how much they'll put into themselves before they pass out.

So compared to them, I'm an alcoholic.

I bring this up because they've often wondered what my liver must look like. Frankly my liver is fine and healthy, which they just refuse to believe because I MUST have a shrivelled up slab of meat in there that's barely hanging on, due to the amount of alcohol I've consumed in my life.

Well fear not, my friends; I may have the answer to my success.

Coffee.

I shit you not. I just saw a study on liver disease (alcholic cirrosis), conducted by Kaiser Permanente. They studied over 125,000 people, men and women, over an 8 year period. The results? For each cup of coffee they drank per day, participants were 22 percent less likely to develop alcoholic cirrhosis. Drinking coffee was also associated with a slight reduction in risk for other types of cirrhosis. Among those who had their blood drawn, liver enzyme levels (which are released into the bloodstream when the liver is diseased or damaged) were higher among individuals who drank more alcohol, indicating liver disease or damage; however, those who drank both alcohol and coffee had lower levels than those who drank alcohol but did not drink coffee, with the strongest link among the heaviest drinkers.

Tea drinking was not related to reduced risk in the study, suggesting that it is not caffeine that is responsible for the relationship between coffee and reduced cirrhosis risk.

So. Tea is as wimpy as we all knew it to be (damn the British), and coffee is the god's ambrosia. My lack of a diseased liver can be directly attributed to the java IV I keep at my desk and hook myself up to every morning and afternoon.

*bloop*...*bloop*...ahhh, that coffee buzz.

Speaking of...now I've got a crave for some Ben & Jerry's. Coffee Coffee Buzz Buzz, baby!