Can drinking coffee prevent gallstones?

This is an automatically translated article.

Coffee is a delicious, attractive and even addictive drink for many people. Drinking coffee has a number of health benefits such as helping the brain stay awake, enhancing intellectual activities, bringing positive psychological refreshment... Besides, drinking coffee every day also brings good health benefits. It also has many other benefits, including preventing the formation of gallstones.

1. What is gallstone disease?

Gallstone disease is formed in the gallbladder or biliary tract, causing symptoms such as:
Severe and continuous pain lasting from 30 minutes to several hours. The pain usually occurs in the epigastrium or right side. Pain nature: Pain is much after eating or at night, making it difficult for people with gallstones to sleep. Gallstone disease can cause many complications such as:
Stones can cause bile blockage in many different episodes. Long-term gallstones will lead to cholangitis, cholecystitis (90% of patients hospitalized are due to cholangitis, cholecystitis) acute or chronic; acute pancreatitis and more serious is septic shock due to biliary tract infection, gallbladder necrosis, peritonitis and sepsis... If not treated promptly and quickly, it can even be life-threatening. live.

2. Effect of coffee on gallstone disease

According to recent studies, men who drink 2 to 3 cups of coffee per day have a 4% lower risk of developing gallstones than men who do not drink coffee regularly. For men who drank four or more cups of coffee a day, the risk was 45 percent lower.
Coffee is a caffeinated beverage, known to stimulate contractions in the gallbladder and reduce cholesterol levels in the bile (a factor that causes gallstones). This is because the development of gallstones depends largely on a balance between cholesterol and bile acids. However, this effect was not found in other caffeinated beverages such as tea or soda.
Although coffee has been known to have a number of metabolic effects that may explain the reduction in gallstone formation, earlier studies on its effects have yielded mixed results. Scientists suggest that the link between coffee consumption and gallstone disease may be due to the effects of caffeine.
In the study, drinks that provided a lower dose of caffeine did not have the same beneficial effects as coffee. For example, the researchers did not find the same effect in men who drank decaffeinated tea, coffee, or soft drinks.

3. Drinking coffee can prevent gallstones?

According to researcher Dr. Michael Leitzmann and colleagues at the Harvard School of Public Health, coffee is a drink that works to prevent gallstones. However, when you have a disease, regular use of coffee has no effect in treating the disease. On the other hand, according to research by scientists, regular coffee consumption increases abdominal pain in people with gallstone disease.
Another line of research by Dr. Anthony Bleyer (a professor of nephrology at Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C.) warns that consuming 6 cups of coffee is quite a lot. This is because high levels of caffeine can cause major effects on sleep, acid reflux, and cardiac arrhythmias. The things that get people to drink a lot of coffee in the first place "may also cause other changes in diet," and it's very likely that these changes ultimately affect gallstone risk.
In summary, do not store too much coffee or regularly use coffee to reduce the risk of disease, because these studies only show an association but not a cause for gallstone disease.

Please dial HOTLINE for more information or register for an appointment HERE. Download MyVinmec app to make appointments faster and to manage your bookings easily.

References: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, webmd.com