Coffee: Moderate Consumption May Reduce Risk Of Heart Disease

Drinking a cup or two (or even three) of Joe a day may reduce your risk of heart disease and other health issues, according to a recent study.

Researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, examined data on three large ongoing studies: 74,890 women in the Nurses' Health Study; 93,054 women in the Nurses' Health Study 2; and 40,557 men in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study.

Every four years, they assessed coffee drinking with food questionnaires. Then, they followed the participants for up to 30 years. During the follow-up period 19,524 women and 12,432 men died from a range of causes.

Researchers found that, in general, men and women who frequently drank coffee were also more likely to smoke and drink alcohol. However, to separate these effects, the researchers repeated the analysis among participants who had never smoked. In this case, they found that coffee could be quite beneficial when eliminating the aforementioned dangerous habits.

"Regular consumption of coffee can be included as part of a healthy, balanced diet," said senior author Frank Hu, M.D., Ph.D., a Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at Harvard, in a news release. "However, certain populations such as pregnant women and children should be cautious about high caffeine intake from coffee or other beverages."

Yet researchers also cautioned that the study was not designed to demonstrate a direct cause and effect relationship between coffee consumption and dying from illness. Therefore, more research will be needed in order to precisely determine how coffee affects the body.

The study is published in the journal Circulation.

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