cups of coffee may be key to long life
TWO NEW STUDIES FIND THAT MORNING CUP OF JOE DOESN’T JUST TASTE GOOD — IT’S GOT HEALTH BENEFITS, TOO
Coffee drinkers had a lower risk of death due to heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and respiratory and kidney disease. Those who drank one cup a day were 12 per cent We cannot say drinking coffee will prolong your life, but we see an association.” Veronica Setiawan Lead author of US study on coffee 2-3 cups of coffee a day, says US report, lowers risk of death by 18%
Coffee addicts and aficionados often say drinking the bitter liquid makes life worth living, but the habit may also help them live longer, according to two major international studies published on Monday.
Experts cautioned, however, that the US and European reports, published in the Annals of
Internal Medicine, failed to show that coffee was truly the reason that many drinkers appeared to have longer lives.
Rather, the studies were observational in nature, meaning they showed an association between coffee-drinking and a propensity toward longevity, but stopped short of proving cause and effect.
The first study, led by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and Imperial College London, examined more than half a million people across 10 countries in Europe.
Those who drank about three cups a day tended to live longer than non-coffee drinkers, said the study, which researchers described as the largest analysis of the effects of coffee-drinking in a European population.
“We found that higher coffee consumption was associated with a lower risk of death from any cause, and specifically for circulatory diseases, and digestive diseases,” said lead author Marc Gunter of the IARC, formerly at Imperial’s School of Public Health.
“Importantly, these results were similar across all of the 10 European countries, with variable coffee drinking habits and customs.”
The second study included more than 180,000 participants of various ethnic backgrounds in the US.
It found benefits to longevity whether the coffee was caffeinated or decaffeinated.
Coffee drinkers had a lower risk of death due to heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and respiratory and kidney disease. Those who drank one cup a day were 12 per cent less likely to die compared to those who didn’t drink coffee.
Those who drank two or three cups per day saw an even higher 18 per cent reduced risk of death.
Popular drink
“We cannot say drinking coffee will prolong your life, but we see an association,” said lead author Veronica Setiawan, an associate professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California.
Coffee is one of the most popular drinks in the world. Some 2.25 billion cups are consumed every day.
Many prior studies have hailed the benefits of coffeedrinking, saying the beverage imparts anti-oxidants, may improve liver function and reduce inflammation. But experts who were not involved in the latest studies urged caution in interpreting the results.
For instance, the European study took a measure of people over 35 who were already generally healthy.
It also asked about coffee consumption just once, at the beginning, and did not update this figure over the span of the study, which included an average follow-up time of 16 years.
Finally, it found signs of a link between women who drank large amounts of coffee and a higher risk of cancer death, but played down this finding, saying it “may be spurious”.