Moderate Coffee Drinkers May Live Longer Says New Harvard Study

Moderate Coffee Drinkers May Live Longer Says New Harvard Study - So, you want to live longer? In addition to proper diet and exercise, a new scientific article published by Harvard researchers this week claims that you must drink at least three to five coffee cups a day.

This study is published in Circulation with the title “Association of Coffee Consumption with Total and Cause-Specific Mortality in Three Large Prospective Cohorts.”

Co-author Walter Willett from the Harvard School of Public Health has told NPR that in their study, they found that people who drank more than three to five cups of coffee per day had about 15 percent lower risk of premature death compared to non-drinkers. 

Their research suggests that the coffee bean itself is loaded with many different nutrients and phytochemicals, and Willett said that both compounds may be working together to have some of these benefits (related to longer life). He also added that their research discovered similar benefits from caffeinated and decaf coffee.

Willett also told the radio and media organization that drinking too much caffeinated coffee can cause insomnia and loss of sleep.

The team analyzed health data from three ongoing studies with more than 200,000 participants. Coffee drinking was assessed using validated food questionnaires every four years over about thirty years. During the research period, more than 19,000 women and 12,000 men died from a range of causes.

In the whole research population, “moderate coffee” consumption was associated with reduced risk of death from diabetes, cardiovascular and neurological diseases including Parkinson’s - and surprisingly, even suicide. Authors said coffee consumption was not associated with cancer deaths, and they took into consideration some potential confounding factors, like physical activity of the participants, smokers, their body mass index, consumption of alcohol and other dietary factors.

Lead author Ming Ding explained that coffee’s bioactive compounds could reduce systematic inflammation and insulin resistance, and that could explain some of their findings. She also clarified that more research are needed to explore the biological mechanisms producing these effects.

Prior to this study, she also published a research discussing the relationship between long-term coffee consumption and risk of cardiovascular disease. The journal Circulation published the scientific article in 2013.

Senior author Frank Hu said their findings support the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Report which concludes that moderate coffee consumption can be incorporated into a healthy dietary pattern.

The link between coffee and human health has been a hot topic in health science, so much so that searching the terms “coffee benefits” on Google will show more than 49 million results. In 2012, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that drinking more cups of coffee per day may lower risk of dying from chronic diseases, meaning, dying from diabetes or heart-related diseases.

In general, studies linking coffee to good health always mention “antioxidants,” a naturally occurring chemical that fights potentially damaging effects of oxygen in the human body. Most of us drink coffee daily not because we want to put antioxidants inside our body. Apparently, coffee is addictive because it contains caffeine.

Worldwide, we drink billions of coffee cups per year. In the United States according to Harvard School of Public Health, 54 percent of Americans over the age of 18 are coffee drinkers, and we rank the eight (sometimes not in the top ten) in the world for drinking the most coffee. Finland topped the chart, followed by Sweden, Switzerland, Germany and France. Source: StGist

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