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jimbobbam • today at 10:34 AM • 2 replies • view on HN

In case anyone is wondering why a paper filter is necessary.

https://www.harvardhealth.org/healthy-aging-and-longevity/wh...


Replies

ozyschmozy • today at 12:33 PM

The article doesn't really make it clear how much of an effect this has

> People younger than 60 who drank one to four cups of coffee, particularly filtered coffee, had lower rates of artery disease and death

> The study is observational and doesn't prove that filtered coffee is healthier than unfiltered coffee

> a cup of unfiltered coffee contains 30 times more diterpenes than a cup of filtered coffee

This sentence in particular is kinda meaningless without specifying the specific amounts and what they mean. For instance, saying "an unfiltered cup of coffee contains 30 times more salt than a filtered cup" would not mean much if one contains 1 ug and the other 30ug, but would be very significant if it was e.g. 1 vs 30g

rnadomvirlabe • today at 12:44 PM

Statistician here. I pulled up the article that the press release seems to mention: https://academic.oup.com/eurjpc/article/27/18/1986/6125530

For all cause mortality among people without cardiovascular disease, they split into groups of men and women and then further into groups of no coffee, filter only, both brews, and unfiltered only.

For both men and women without preexisting cardiovascular disease, both brews had the lowest all cause mortality. I'd expect that "both" would be between "only filter" and "only unfiltered". It isn't because "both" is a separate population from the "only" groups, indicating that confounding may be substantial here. Nevertheless, for people without preexisting CVD, all but one of the confidence intervals for the hazard ratio is entirely below 1, and the unfiltered for men includes 1. I wouldn't draw any strong conclusions from this.

My recommendation would be to just drink your coffee, take your blood pressure regularly to see if you're hypertensive, and check your cholesterol with labs if you're regularly hypertensive.

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