Extra shot of longevity in your cuppa
COFFEE lovers rejoice, because new research shows coffee drinkers live longer lives, even those who consume up to eight cups daily.
The decade-long study, published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, found a 10 to 15 per cent boost in longevity for coffee drinkers, compared to abstainers. It’s the first large study to suggest a benefit even in people with genetic glitches affecting how their bodies process caffeine.
To conduct the research, nine million participants – half women and half men, aged between 40 and 69 – filled out a questionnaire about daily coffee consumption, exercise and other habits, and received physical exams including blood tests. The majority of the participants were coffee drinkers; almost one-third confirmed they drank two to three cups daily, and 10,000 drank at least eight cups daily.
Over the next decade, 14,225 participants died, mostly from cancer or heart disease.
While caffeine has been shown to cause short-term increases in blood pressure, especially in people with genetic variation, there was no increase in the risk of dying from heart disease and other blood pressure-related causes for the study’s coffee drinkers when compared to the non-drinkers.
While it’s not clear exactly how drinking coffee affects longevity, the study’s lead author and researcher at the US National Cancer Institute, Erikka Loftfield, said it might be a result of the thousands of chemical compounds including antioxidants that are found in coffee, which help protect cells from damage.
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