Your morning cup of coffee may start to taste even better after a major government study found that frequent coffee drinkers have a lower risk of dying from a variety of diseases, compared with people who drink little or no coffee.
The report, published online
in The New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, analyzed the
coffee-drinking habits of more than 400,000 men and women ages 50 to 71, making
it the largest-ever study of the relationship between coffee consumption and
health.
Previous studies have offered conflicting results
on the relative benefits or harms associated with regular coffee consumption.
While coffee contains caffeine, a stimulant that may temporarily increase heart
rate and blood pressure in some people, coffee also contains hundreds of unique
compounds and antioxidants that may confer health benefits. Further confusing
much of the research into coffee is the fact that many coffee drinkers are also
smokers, and it has been difficult to untangle the relative health effects of
coffee and cigarettes.
To learn more, researchers from the National
Institutes of Health analyzed diet and health information collected from
questionnaires filled out by 229,119 men and 173,141 women who were members of
the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) between 1995 and 1996. The
respondents were followed until 2008, by which point 52,000 had died.
As expected, the researchers found that the
regular coffee drinkers in the group were also more likely to be smokers. They
ate more red meat and fewer fruits and vegetables, exercised less and drank
more alcohol – all behaviors associated with poor health.
But once the researchers controlled for those
risks, the data showed that the more coffee a person consumed, the less likely
he or she was to die from a number of health problems, including diabetes,
heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, infections and even injuries and
accidents.
Over all, the risk of dying during the 14-year
study period was about 10 percent lower for men and about 15 percent lower for
women who drank anywhere from two cups to six or more cups of coffee a day. The
association between coffee and lower risk of dying was similar whether the
coffee drinker consumed caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee.
Neal D.
Freedman, the study’s lead author and an investigator for the
National Cancer Institute, cautioned that the findings, based on observational
data, show only an association between coffee consumption and lower risk for
disease, so it isn’t known whether drinking more coffee will lead to better
health. As a result, Dr. Freedman said that people should be conservative in
interpreting the data, but that regular coffee drinkers can be reassured.
“It’s a
modest effect,” he said. “But the biggest concern for a long time has been that
drinking coffee is a risky thing to do. Our results, and some of those of more
recent studies, provide reassurance for coffee drinkers that this isn’t the
case. The people who are regularly drinking coffee have a similar risk of death
as nondrinkers, and there might be a modest benefit.’’
The researchers also looked at death rates from
cancer during the study period and found no link between coffee consumption and
cancer risk among women. There was a slightly higher risk of cancer death among
men who drank several cups of coffee a day, but Dr. Freedman said the effect
was small and may be due to chance. Additional research will analyze
associations between coffee drinking and various types of cancer.
Dr. Freedman said the next step is to learn more
about the various compounds in coffee and how they may be related to improved
health.
“It’s estimated there are 1,000 or more compounds
in coffee,’’ said Dr. Freedman. “All of these could affect health in different
ways. It might be due to one of the many compounds in coffee, or a number of
them working together.”
