Reducing the jitters (at least the heart kind)

 

So coffee, normally accused of making people more edgy and jittery (The Flash TV show had a coffee shop named Jitters), can actually help with the cardio jitters called atrial fibrillation.

Really.

A Daily Coffee May Cut Atrial Fibrillation Risk by 39%

"  “Coffee increases physical activity which is known to reduce atrial fibrillation,” said Gregory M. Marcus, MD, MAS, who holds the Endowed Professorship in Atrial Fibrillation Research and is an electrophysiologist at UCSF Health. Marcus is the senior author of the paper, which appears Nov. 9 in JAMA. “Caffeine is also a diuretic, which could potentially reduce blood pressure and in turn lessen A-Fib risk. Several other ingredients in coffee also have anti-inflammatory properties that could have positive effects.”

"Researchers named their study DECAF for Does Eliminating Coffee Avoid Fibrillation? It is the first randomized clinical trial to investigate the link between caffeinated coffee and A-Fib, and it was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH)."

Now that was a clever name.




Reference: Wong CX, Cheung CC, Montenegro G, et al. Caffeinated coffee consumption or abstinence to reduce atrial fibrillation: the decaf randomized clinical trial. JAMA. 2025. doi: 10.1001/jama.2025.21056

God may have made things tough on humans on this Earth, but he did give us aspirin and coffee.