More Good News About Coffee

The American Heart Association says regular consumption of the beloved beverage is linked to longevity.

Drinking a second or third cup of coffee may do more than get you through a long day—it may also reduce your risk of death from heart disease and other illnesses, says a study in the American Heart Association journal Circulation. In the study, people who regularly drank moderate amounts of coffee daily—fewer than 5 cups per day—experienced a lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease, neurological diseases, Type 2 diabetes and even suicide.

The benefit held true for drinking caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee, suggesting it’s not just the caffeine providing health perks but possibly the naturally occurring chemical compounds in the coffee beans.

“Bioactive compounds in coffee reduce insulin resistance and systematic inflammation,” said the study’s first author Ming Ding, M.D., a doctoral student at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts. “They might be responsible for the inverse association between coffee and mortality. However, more studies are needed to investigate the biological mechanisms producing these effects.”

The findings are based on data from three large ongoing studies: 74,890 women in the Nurses’ Health Study; 93,054 women in the Nurses’ Health Study 2; and 40,557 men in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Researchers assessed coffee drinking every four years using validated food questionnaires and followed participants for up to 30 years.

“Regular consumption of coffee can be included as part of a healthy, balanced diet,” said senior author Frank Hu, M.D., Ph.D., a Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at Harvard. “However, certain populations such as pregnant women and children should be cautious about high caffeine intake from coffee or other beverages.”

The study was not designed to show a direct cause and effect relationship between coffee consumption and dying from illness. So the findings should be interpreted with caution, researchers said. One potential drawback of the study design was that participants were asked to report how much coffee they drank; however, researchers found the assessment to be reliable.

Previous studies found inconsistent associations between coffee drinking and risk of total and cause-specific death. This study adds to the literature that moderate coffee consumption may confer health benefits. However, more research is needed to determine how coffee affects the body and whether different types of coffee may play a role.

Source: The American Heart Association (www.heart.org). The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health. You can read the entire study here.