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Too much caffeine raises risk of miscarriage

CARLY WEEKS

From Monday's Globe and Mail

Latest comment posted at 5:14 PM EDT 21/01/08

Pregnant women who consume more than two cups of coffee daily are twice as likely to suffer a miscarriage ...Read the full article

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  1. Kay Ay from Canada writes: A very good balanced article with just enough scary stuff.
    You have to listen to your body. I went decaf during my pregnancies...couldn't drink coffee at all the first time and lived on Earl Grey decaf tea and steamed milk.
    I had better pick up some decaf for my sister as not to be a bad influence!
  2. ms beee from O-Town, Canada writes: How is decaf better than regular coffee though? Unless you read otherwise, it's been treated with a number of harsh chemicals.

    As someone who is currently pregnant, if I followed every guideline out there, I'm not even sure what I would/could eat. There are so many restrictions and guidelines and studies that I just feel the best I can do is to follow a balanced, healthy diet, and if it involves a little caffeine, so be it. If it's meant to be, it's meant to be.
  3. Mark H from Columbus, IN, United States writes: 'ms beee from O-Town, Canada writes: How is decaf better than regular coffee though? Unless you read otherwise, it's been treated with a number of harsh chemicals.'

    The most common method of decaffinating coffee is running if through a bed of supercritical CO2, which isn't a harsh chemical (unless you're Al Gore!), and leaves no trace. Usually decaf tastes so awful it's like drinking harsh chemicals, anyways.
  4. Traciatim No_Lastname from Canada writes: There was also this article:
    http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSHAR96754420080109

    and the tinyURL just in case:
    http://tinyurl.com/22ht5s

    It describes that under 200mg of caffeine is fine, and only excessive amounts ( greater than 200mg) caused the real trouble. So your one cup a day is fine, or so it seems. As long as your one cup is a NORMAL SIZE. For reference, a cup of coffee is around 8 oz of coffee. Also, note below the size of drinks and their caffeine content for Tim Hortons coffee (I'm not singling them out, all coffee shops I know of size like this, I only have the info from tims available to copy and paste).

    8oz (small) 80 mg
    10oz (med) 100 mg
    14oz (large) 140 mg
    20oz (x-large) 200 mg

    So remember, just one medium a day and you're well under the danger zone.
  5. Mhairi Kerr from Toronto, Canada writes: Unfortunately I can now see some poor uneducated teenaged girls after reading this article guzzling coffee in hopes of terminating a pregnancy.
  6. E F from Ottawa, Canada writes: ms beee, I'm also pregnant right now and have been drinking decaf coffee since we were trying to conceive (over a year now). I only ever buy coffee decaffeinated using the Swiss Water Process, which involves absolutely no chemicals. The caffeine is soaked out of the beans. I'm currently drinking one by President's Choice Organics and it's quite flavourful.
  7. C. G. from Canada writes: Oh come on. Are you kidding me? This is ridiculous. How can this be represented as a 'finding' based on INTERVIEWS with 1063 women!?!?!?!? Interviews!? So the interview responses are automatically taken as facts on which to base conclusions? Absolutely no scientfic evidence of a causal link.

    I'm shocked. I don't know how this research leads to the conclusion that 'Too much caffeine raises risk of miscarriage'. Seems like irresponsible unsupported fearmongering to me. But it sure grabs an easy headline.
  8. Gemma Callaway from Canada writes: I have to agree with CG. Especially important was the fact that they didn't actually take into account how much over the 200 limit the caffeine amounts were, whether the women smoked, etc. This is not good science.

    And you really can't do proper science on something like this, just like you can't with alcohol, hence the idea being promoted that absolutely no alcohol is acceptable. You cannot take women and give them different doses of caffeine in a controlled setting to see what levels actually do cause increased risks of miscarriage. Its unethical, just like giving women different doses of alcohol to see which levels actually do correlate with increased FAS is unethical. We can only speculate after the fact and come up with approximate guesses.

    Just enjoy your cup of coffee and don't worry about it.
  9. Ann Driscoll from Toronto, Canada writes: Another 'briefed' report by a newspaper to raise hysteria among the pregnant crowd.

    The article is simply emphasizing the obvious - moderation is key, not elmination. It is also saying minimize your intake in the first trimester only (G&M didn't mention that one) - so the first 12 weeks. If I remember correctly, I didn't want to eat or drink much in the first 12 weeks anyway. The rest of the pregnancy - 28 glorious weeks, if you are lucky - is not significantly impacted by caffeine consumption or says the study.

    I drank caffeine - with three kiddos, pregnant and a full time job - I needed it. I would never tell a pregnant woman to stop drinking caffeine, just limit the intake to a cup or so.

    As with everything - read the fine print.

    Remember - no alcohol, no hot dogs, no tuna or predatory fish, no sushi, no deli meats unless you heat them for 30 seconds in the microwave, no canned goods (remember BPA in tin cans), no unpasturized cheese, no no no!
  10. Amy H. from Toronto, Canada writes: I, too, am pregnant. I finally found some information about how much caffeine there is in tea: 60mg roughly for a 5-minute steeped black tea. I've kept it to one cup a day so far (or two cups off one teabag), but may feel free to indulge in a second cup every so often now.
  11. whatevah D from Canada writes: ms beee from O-Town, Canada writes: How is decaf better than regular coffee though? Unless you read otherwise, it's been treated with a number of harsh chemicals.

    As someone who is currently pregnant, if I followed every guideline out there, I'm not even sure what I would/could eat.

    I agree. It drove me crazy when I was pg. It changed every day - eat tuna, don't eat tuna, eat tuna, don't eat tuna. Then I had my ob-gyn tell me sushi was ok, and I realized it's mainly cultural. I read that in France, where I'm sure they are eating soft cheeses, they think raw veggies are bad.

    I would have had coffee when I was pregnant, but I couldn't stomach it... couldn't stomach much actually... except greasy bad for you foods!
  12. Socrates speaks from Canada writes: North American life style is all about bad habits and this is one of it. Alcohol is even a bigger threat and so is smoking. Red meats and fried foods too.
  13. Gordon Murray from Canada writes: Where birth control "rhythm method" failed, the inadvertently ignorant of this article on caffeine and miscarriage might benefit from "several sharings".
    "Why is this story stuck to the coffee pot?"
    "I dunno."
  14. michael moore from toronto, Canada writes: If I were pregnant -- not, I admit, a very likely event -- I would look at the story and say that if two cups doubles the risk, any lesser amount of coffee is likely to increase the risk by some lesser or perhaps less easily measured amount.
  15. brokeback mountain from Canada writes: well, judging by the quality of the editorial content in the globe recently, why am i not surprised.... the globe has been using scare tactics to gain readership, and repurpose the content onto ctv news to get viewership.. yawn..
  16. Frank Black from Vancouver, Canada writes: Too much caffeine raises risk of miscarriage

    I promise not to get preggy then...
  17. Canadian in Poland from Poland writes: It's true about the regional differences thing. I live in Poland right now and they're much more laid back about these things here. Alcohol? Not great for you, but I've read some "top-notch" British books on pregnancy that list anything under 10 units of alcohol as being safe (1 unit = 1 small glass of wine). As for sushi, I've also read that as long as the fish is frozen first, as I believe it is in Ontario (but not in Quebec?), then it's ok to eat. Right now I'm trying to figure out how to ask the local sushi place in my rudimentary Polish!

    The point is, no one agrees, and no one can know for sure what causes the miscarriages. Welcome to motherhood I guess. Should I drink coffee? Should I send Jr. to school with a helmet on? What if my great-grandma's sister had some genetic disease? Toss the dice, do what's right for you, and hopefully you come out alright in the end.

    I just wish that mothers, mothers-in-law and husbands were banned from seeing these articles so that I'm not subjected to a huge guilt trip everytime I have a bite of something that just might be bad for me and the baby!
  18. iRateMds Dotcom from Boucherville, Canada writes: An individual study is never the final answer. This study showed that less than two cups of coffee is safe.
    Another study showed no effect... Epidemiology. 2008 Jan;19(1):55-62.
    News articles don't not give us the links to the original articles.
    Also, searches on only give us a summary abstract.
    No caffeine during pregnancy would be the simple answer.
  19. Pepper Gee from Toronto, Canada writes: So maybe that's what happened. Wish I'd known this 25 years ago.
  20. Andrea Ford from Canada writes: Watched CTV news last night and interesting to note that Dr. Koren also said that scaring pregnant women has become the newest national sport.
  21. Cynthia C from Toronto, Canada writes: This isn't really news. They've been talking about how caffeine isn't that great for pregnant women for years.
  22. Emmy B from Canada writes: As Cynthia above says, this isn't really news - there have been hints of a link of miscarriage with too much caffeine for quite a while. I'm pregnant with baby#2, due in a few days, and I've just read this over a small coffee with no concerns whatsoever. I've had 3 miscarriages, and don't believe that I've done anything to cause them. I'm a biologist - biology is pretty random, development is hugely complex with millions of things that can go wrong, and I'm quite ok with that. Pregnant woman have enough stress on their plates without having to worry that every little thing they do/eat/breathe/think might harm the baby. Everything in moderation.
  23. Eric the Red from Canada writes: " C. G. from Canada writes: Oh come on. Are you kidding me? This is ridiculous. How can this be represented as a 'finding' based on INTERVIEWS with 1063 women"

    C.G., welcome to the latest trend in science: researchers too lazy to actually sit down and conduct original research so instead they review other people's findings and collate them into one nice presentation. Papers then eat this up since it does one thing: generate enough buzz as to attract advertisers to put more ads on G &M sites.

    The ultimate irony is that even if people radically change pre-pregnancy behaviour, what are the odds the child is going to be eating crap food once it's 2,3,4,5 years old?

    That's right folks - don't drink that coffee! But be sure to give the little tyke processed food later on in life!
  24. Eric the Red from Canada writes: If anything, coffee drinking will increase among teenagers......
  25. L C from Canada writes: Keep in mind that a high percentage of these articles are directly from University students fighting for their thesis. Someone will be around in a few months or years to tell us differently. You can't and should not believe everything you hear or read.

    Ma and Pa's old fashion ways are still the best ways out there !!!
  26. Elizabeth v a from Victoria, B.C., Canada writes: I'm not advocating this - and if I had it to over I would do it different- but throughout my 3 pregnancies I drank cofee AND I smoked. My babies were 9lbs 5ounces; 6lbs 8ounces; 5lbs 14 ounces (twins); and 8lbs 12ounces. No miscarriages either. But that was in the days when there was no evil.
  27. Karin Green from Princeton, BC, Canada writes: We are turning motherhood into martyrdom! There are also a school of thought, supported by studies, that warns endless stress and worry is not good for a fetus!
  28. whatevah D from Canada writes: Elizabeth v a from Victoria, B.C., Canada writes: I'm not advocating this - and if I had it to over I would do it different- but throughout my 3 pregnancies I drank cofee AND I smoked. My babies were 9lbs 5ounces; 6lbs 8ounces; 5lbs 14 ounces (twins); and 8lbs 12ounces. No miscarriages either. But that was in the days when there was no evil.

    While I definitely don't advocate smoking while pregnant, I do think we have TOO much information now to freak moms out... as my mom says to me, how did we ever survive in the past?

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