After a night of drinking, a morning cup-of-Joe might relieve more than your aching head: it might be helping your liver. Every cup of coffee per day you average confers a 22% reduced risk of developing alcoholic cirrhosis—a liver disease often caused by long term alcohol consumption—compared with people who never drank coffee, according to a new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine

Through interviews and questionnaires, researchers asked more than 125,000 individuals in the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program about their consumption of alcohol, coffee and tea per day during the previous year for an average of more than 14 years. None of the participants had liver disease upon entering the study and, by 2001, 199 of them had developed alcoholic cirrhosis.

Researchers found that the more coffee one drinks, the lower his or her risk of developing alcoholic cirrhosis. At one to three cups per day—compared with people who never drank coffee—the risk was lowered by 40%. Those who drank more than four cups per day had a reduced risk of 80%. Coffee has no effect on nonalcoholic cirrhosis.

What it means: Excess consumption of alcohol has many harmful effects on the body—not only on the liver—so the primary way to avoid cirrhosis is to control alcohol consumption. Still, the study might offer a casual connection between coffee, a known source of antioxidants, and the reduced risk of developing alcohol cirrhosis, but more studies need to be done to support these findings and to identify the ingredient in coffee that acts as the protective mechanism. (Caffeine is not that ingredient because drinking tea did not confer the same benefits as coffee.)

From the archives:  
06/05/06 What Alcohol Does to a Child
01/23/06 Balding, Wrinkled, and Stoned