Coffee a lifegiver scientists

BRITAIN: Drinking coffee could cut the risk of dying early, with each cup increasing lifespan by up to nine minutes a day, research suggests.

Two studies, including the largest ever conducted into coffee drinking, found that having even a single cup a day reduced the risk of dying early from any cause, and dramatically cut the chance of death from digestive problems.

People who drank one 350ml cup of coffee a day reduced their risk of dying early by 12 per cent over 16 years, while three cups cut the risk by 18 per cent.

Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk at Cambridge University, calculated that, if causal, it meant a cup of coffee a day extended the average life of a man by three months and a woman by a month.

Researchers from Imperial College London analysed data from more than half a million people aged 35 or over from 10 European Union countries. After 16 years, almost 42,000 had died from a range of conditions including cancer and circulatory diseases.

After taking into account lifestyle factors, the researchers found that the group with the highest consumption of coffee had a lower risk for all causes of death. Men who drank at least 21⁄2 cups a day reduced their risk by 12 per cent, and women by 7 per cent.

Coffee also cut the risk of dying from digestive diseases by 51 per cent for men and 40 per cent for women, and lowered the risk of death from circulatory disease for women by 22 per cent.

A separate study of 215,000 people by the University of Southern California found that one cup of coffee a day reduced death by 12 per cent for both men and women, and three cups reduced the risk of dying early by 18 per cent.

– Telegraph Group