Moderate Coffee Drinking May Prevent Early Death

Host of risks reduced in those drinking up to five cups per day.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -- People who drink up to five cups of coffee per day are less likely to die from heart disease, neurological disease, type 2 diabetes, or suicide, a new study suggests.

"The main takeaway is that regular consumption of coffee can be incorporated into a healthy diet," senior author Frank Hu, MD, of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston told Reuters Health by phone.

"There is no evidence of harm of regular consumption in terms of chronic disease risk or mortality, and consistent evidence that consumption of coffee reduces the risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease," Hu said.

"People who are already drinking it should continue to enjoy it, but for people who don't drink it or don't like it, there's no particular reason to start for the sole reason of health," he said.

Hu and his co-authors studied the association of coffee intake -- caffeinated, decaffeinated, or both -- and risk of death based on self-reported coffee habits of more than 160,000 women in the Nurses' Health Study and Nurses' Health Study 2 and 40,000 men in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study.

The researchers had data on participants from the mid-1980s or early 1990s through 2012. During that time, 19,524 women and 12,432 men died.

Those who reported drinking one to five cups of any type of coffee per day were less likely to have died during follow-up than those who did not drink coffee, the authors reported online November 16 in Circulation.

Death from heart disease, neurological disease, and suicide was less common among moderate coffee drinkers than among others, but there was no relationship with deaths from cancer, the researchers found.

"The benefit in terms of mortality is very small," and leveled out at four to five cups per day, Hu said.

For diabetes and cardiovascular disease, caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee seem to have similar effects, so the benefits may be due to compounds in the coffee other than caffeine, he said.

"Coffee of course is a complex beverage, it's really difficult or impossible to pinpoint the ingredients that are responsible," Hu said.

But for neurodegenerative disease, depression, and suicide, most likely the benefits are due to caffeine, he said.

"For people who drink a lot of soda or sugary beverages, coffee would be a good alternative," he said.

"I don't think we have data to recommend one type of coffee against other options," or to recommend an exact amount of coffee, given that taste is very individualized and some people are more sensitive to caffeine, he said.

Regular coffee drinkers should still be aware of the amount of sugar and calories added to their drinks, he said.

Source: www.medpagetoday.com