Search Here

Good news for coffee drinkers, as scientists in Norway discover that java can do much more than just give you a kick start in the morning. 

According to previous studies, the beans from which coffee is brewed from, can not only help with weight loss, but also reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease or dementia, boost muscle growth, protect against certain types of cancers including cutting down one's risk of premature death, among many other benefits. 

But can coffee really help reduce pain?

For the study, the researchers asked 48 volunteers to mimic office workers and perform fake work on computers for 90 minutes. Continuous working on computers are known to cause shoulders, neck, forearms and wrists pain and the researchers through this study aimed at comparing how people with chronic pain and those without it, tolerated the tasks.

Just so that the participants do not experience "unpleasant effects of caffeine deprivation" like sleepiness and fatigue, the researchers allowed them to have a coffee. 

During the analysis of the study, the scientists found much lower intensity of pain among 19 coffee drinking participants than 29 people who didn't. 

The researchers from Norway's National Institute of Occupational Health and Oslo University Hospital noticed said that coffee's apparent pain-mitigation was relevant in people, regardless of them suffering chronic pain or not. 

The study authors noted that since the study was not aimed primarily at studying the effects of coffee on pain reduction, the results come with many uncertainties. For example, since the coffee intake by the participants was not measured by the researchers, how much of coffee worked for pain reduction is unknown to them. 

But, researchers suspect that coffee drinkers and abstainers were similar in all respects except for their java consumption, Medical Xpress reported. 

Such problems weaken the significance of the findings. However, such reservations should not hold back coffee drinkers from continuing their daily caffeine habit.

The study was published this week in the journal BMC Research.