Regular Coffee Consumption May Lower Suicide Risk by 50 Percent

Good news for Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts fans. A new study shows that regular coffee consumption may decrease risk of suicide.

Now, let's for a second forget about how too much diet Pepsi, coffee or chocolate can rev up your heart beat, give you the gitters, make you nervous and just down right isn't good for you. Period. So no, that's not what this study is suggesting. Everything in moderation, of course.

In any case, according to researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), they found that drinking several cups of coffee daily can actually decrease the risk of suicide in both men and women by nearly 50 percent.

"Unlike previous investigations, we were able to assess association of consumption of caffeinated and non-caffeinated beverages, and we identify caffeine as the most likely candidate of any putative protective effect of coffee," the lead researcher Michel Lucas, research fellow in the Department of Nutrition at HSPH said in a press statement.

Here's the way it works: Coffee's key ingredient is caffeine, and as you drink this beverage, your central nervous system is stimulated. In turn, it acts as a mild antidepressant through enhancing the production of various neurotransmitters in the brain, such as serotonin, dopamine and noradrenaline.

For the study, researchers analyzed the data of 43,599 men who had participated in the Health Professionals Follow Up Study between 1988 and 2008. They also analyzed 73,820 women who were a part of the Nurses' Health Study II (NHS II) between 1993 and 2007.  The subjects shared information regarding their caffeine intake via questionnaires, with the studies involving 277 cases of suicide.

Despite results showing that coffee can improve mood, study authors also emphasized that depressed individuals should not increase their daily intake of coffee.

Other studies in fact have also shown that drinking coffee can irritate or even cause stomach ulcers.

Our advice? Everything in moderation, as we said before.

More information regarding the study can be found in the World Journal of Biological Psychiatry.