Yet another reason to drink more coffee.
Recently, a new study has been published that may further justify your coffee addiction. The best reason to date to drink coffee is to live longer.
A journal called Circulation, found that regular coffee drinkers- people who drank less than five cups of coffee in a given day, have a lower risk of dying early from a number of different causes.
This isn’t to say that coffee is the answer to longevity, but, researchers have found that those who drank coffee on a regular basis had a lower risk of dying during the study’s 30 year follow up from problems such as diabetes, heart disease, brain conditions and suicide.
Interestingly, the researchers found the lower risk of death was similar among people who drank caffeinated as well as decaffeinated coffee.
The researchers studied several large groups of people totaling 208,500 men and women, and asked the volunteers about their coffee drinking habits every four years for three decades.
Study participants who drank between less than a cup of coffee and three cups a day had 5% to 9% lower risk of dying that those who drank no coffee. Those who drank more than three a day did not see any benefit.
But when the researchers looked at coffee consumption only among people who said they never smoked, the relationship became clearer: Those who drank between less than a cup of coffee and three cups a day had 6% to 8% lower risk of dying than non-coffee drinkers. Those who drank three to five cups and more than five cups had 15% and 12% lower death rates.
Researchers write: “other components in coffee besides caffeine might play a beneficial role mediating the association between long-term coffee consumption and risk of mortality.”
For many years coffee was deemed unhealthy. But much of that concern came from research in the 1970s and 1980s that linked coffee to higher rates of cancer and heart disease, but didn’t account for the fact that coffee drinkers are also more likely to smoke, possibly drink and engage in other behaviors that contribute to cancer and heart problems.
More recent studies are actually starting to find the opposite, showing that coffee drinkers might have a slightly lower mortality risk.
Drink up folks.
[Featured Image Credit: mentalhelse.no]