TheSoko.com - Is It Safe to Drink Coffee Again?

Drinking lots of coffee is being encouraged again! Peter Liu percolates the details.

Have your coffee drinking habits been altered little by little this past while as the longstanding debate over the healthy or detrimental effects of coffee raged on? Are you cutting how many cups per day? Or watching the strength of caffeine, or the brands you buy? Using different creams and sugars? Well, don’t back away from coffee altogether because of health scares like increased risk of heart disease or constipation. Another study on the positive health benefits of coffee has appeared, proving that heavy coffee drinkers have an overall lower risk of death.

Steamy Findings

A study published in the June 2008 issue of the journal Annals of Internal Medicine has stated that drinking coffee does not have a negative impact on your health and does not increase your risk of death. The study, led by University of Madrid epidemiologist Esther Lopez-Garcia, followed and monitored the lives and coffee habits of 86,214 women starting in 1980 and 41,736 men starting in 1986 until 2004. Free of both cancer and heart disease before joining the study, subjects filled out surveys every two to four years about their coffee habits, their diet and their smoking. From those numbers 6,888 men and 11,095 women died during the study; 2,049 men died of cardiovascular disease and 2,491 died of cancer, while 2,368 women died of cardiovascular disease and 5,011 died of cancer.

As gruesome as those statistics are, it was discovered that women who drank four to five cups of coffee per day had a 26 per cent lower all-cause mortality rate, while women who drank two to three cups per day had an 18 per cent decrease in risk of heart disease (both percentages compared to those who didn’t drink coffee at all). In men, coffee seemed to have the same gainful health boost, but the numbers never reached statistical significance, leaving the benefits to chance. The results of the study showed that there were no connections between coffee consumption and cancer and that the bulk of the health benefit comes from a decreased risk of heart disease.

Even though coffee drinkers made up the higher percentage for absolute risk of death, factors such as alcohol consumption, dietary lifestyle, smoking and exercise were removed from the equation to conclude that coffee wasn’t responsible for high death rates. It seemed that coffee drinkers were more likely to take on more harmful habits, leaving coffee innocent. On the bright side, the health effects of coffee extend to both caffeinated and de-caffeinated.

Put On Another Pot

With the study results extolling the virtues of coffee, is it time to grab your next large double-double or stick to curtailing your usual caffeinated dietary habits? The negative aspects of coffee are mostly caffeine-related, notwithstanding some individual health issues. It’s still generally disputed as to whether or not coffee is beneficial towards the body. Coffee has been thought to cause increased heart disease risk, short-term memory impairment issues and increased risk of acid reflux.

This recent coffee study and the growing stack of known health benefits that include reduction in risk for Parkinson’s disease has confirmed for the time being that drinking coffee will not kill you. With or without the caffeine in your morning java, coffee protects against heart disease, meaning the heart healthy compounds are lurking elsewhere. At this point, more research on coffee is needed to find out exactly what it is about coffee that positively affects our bodies, but what we already know about its health benefits provides incentive for another cup. Beyond being the most excellent wake-up tool, coffee is great for improving mood, contains antioxidants that slow and even prevent cell damage, can reduce the risk of Type-2 diabetes and slows the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. It is a great diuretic and does not actually dehydrate the body. Chlorogenic acid in coffee helps control blood sugar, while magnesium improves the control of insulin.

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a coffee a day

The American Heart Association claims that having a few cups of coffee a day isn’t really harmful and I’d say it’s time to agree. Coffee, caffeinated or not, is ultimately harmless. The statistical information provided by the study at least clinches the fact that coffee alone cannot kill and neither can caffeine. Having a few more cups per day isn’t fatal, but too much of anything is sure to cause problems.

Sources:
Annals of Internal Medicine
National Post
CTV
Vancouver Sun
Annals of Internal Medicine