There are a lot of headlines floating around the internet today, about how coffee may reduce certain health risks of alcohol. The more accurate ones suggest that that coffee is linked to a reduced risk of cirrhosis of the liver. The less accurate imply that coffee may "reverse" liver damage completely, or perhaps worse, may have some sort of blanket buffering effect for all of alcohol’s ill effects. And neither of these is the case. A new study found only that drinking more coffee seems to be linked to a reduced risk of cirrhosis – but it didn't touch any of the other ways in which alcohol can negatively affect the body. So, at least based on the current research, we'd be deluded to think that coffee alone can reverse the damage that alcohol can do.
The new study was a meta-analysis of nine earlier ones, which included over 430,000 people, and looked for correlations between coffee consumption, cirrhosis, and death by cirrhosis. In total, just under 2,000 people developed cirrhosis. The authors of the new study found that the more coffee people drank, the lower their risk for cirrhosis: Drinking one, two, three, or four cups per day was linked to a 22%, 43%, 57%, and 65% reduced risk of cirrhosis, respectively. For alcoholic cirrhosis per se, the reduction in risk linked to drinking two cups was 38%. Drinking two cups was also linked to a 45% reduced risk of death from cirrhosis.
"Coffee appeared to protect against cirrhosis," said study author O. J. Kennedy. "This could be an important finding for patients at risk of cirrhosis to help to improve their health outcomes. However, we now need robust clinical trials to investigate the wider benefits and harms of coffee so that doctors can make specific recommendations to patients."
Coffee’s benefits and harms are fairly well known at this point, with the research laying out many more benefits than harms. And as the authors point out, "unlike many medications, coffee is generally well tolerated and has an excellent safety profile." But the bigger issue may be whether, based on this and similar studies, people will think they can undo the effects of heavy drinking with an extra cup of coffee or two. It may reduce the risk of cirrhosis by a significant amount, but it may not affect the myriad other ill effects that too much alcohol can bring about, like heart disease, cancer, and dementia.
So coffee may well help repair the liver in various ways: It has a wide range of antioxidants that repair cellular damage and reduce inflammation. And, given all the other benefits of coffee, it’s certainly worth continuing your coffee habit, if you already have one. But it’s not license to drink more alcohol; and it’s definitely not a suggestion to drink more coffee in an effort to reverse the damage that consuming too much alcohol can do. Even coffee, in all its glory, can't offset these effects completely.