Drink coffee and tea. They may be good for your liver

Drinking coffee and tea might offer us a vital life-saving benefit: Protection from liver disease.

A new study out of the Netherlands shows both drinks can protect against liver fibrosis, part of the process of liver disease, which afflicts one in 10 Americans, according to the American Liver Foundation.

Our decades of bad eating habits and sedentary lifestyle, have taken a toll on our livers, notes the study's lead author Louise J. M. Alferink of the MC University Medical Center. Obesity has caused an uptick in cases of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), caused by a buildup of fat in the liver. The American Liver Foundation said a quarter of the U.S. population has NAFLD.

The study's authors wanted to test the disease-fighting powers of coffee to see if it might beat back liver disease. Why coffee? Because it has been linked to a longer life, has antioxidant effects and experimental data show coffee could provide liver benefits.

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The study, published in the Journal of Hepatology, analyzed about 2,500 people, tracking their coffee and tea consumption as well as liver stiffness. Liver stiffness is a method of measuring liver fibrosis, the scarring of the liver by constant inflammation. High levels of stiffness are associated with severe scarring.

They found drinking at least three cups of coffee daily was "significantly associated" with less scarring of the liver. Frequent coffee and even a small amount of tea, the study found, "were significantly associated with lower liver stiffness values."

The findings, the authors determined, show coffee and tea can prevent liver scarring even before the development of liver disease.

Italian doctors Salvatore Petta and Giulio Marchesini said more studies need to be done to determine the amounts and types of coffee and teas that promote better liver health.

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