Daily Coffee Drinkers May Be at Lower Risk of Early Death, Study Suggests
A new study found that those who regularly drink coffee have up to a 31% lower risk of premature death, compared to those who don’t drink coffee.
The study discovered mortality risk was consistent for both coffee drinkers who opt for unsweetened or sugar-sweetened coffee, but not artificially sweetened coffee.
Experts are unsure as to why coffee improves mortality, but hypothesize it may be related to other lifestyle factors.
There’s a general consensus among health professionals that coffee can be a healthy addition to your diet and that a steaming cup has some serious health benefits. Recent research even found that drinking up to three cups of coffee a day could lower your risk for heart disease. And now, a new study suggests that people who drink coffee regularly have a lower risk of early death, compared to those who don’t drink coffee.
The study published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine found people who drink one and a half to three and a half cups of coffee a day had a lower risk of early death compared to non-coffee drinkers. The findings were consistent even when participants added a teaspoon of real sugar, but not an artificial sweetener, to their cups.
The study determined that those who drank unsweetened coffee were up to 21% less likely to die early than those who didn’t drink coffee at all. Those who drank sugar-sweetened coffee were up to 31% less likely to suffer a premature death than non-coffee drinkers, according to the study. No conclusive results were found for people who drank coffee sweetened with artificial sugar and it did not account for people who added cream or milk to their cups.
Researchers examined around 171,000 people in the United Kingdom from data provided by the UK Biobank who regularly drank coffee, both sweetened and unsweetened, over a seven-year period. Participants were on average around 56 years old, did not have preexisting cancer or cardiovascular disease, and were recruited from 2006 to 2010. Habits were self-reported by participants. The researchers adjusted for factors like diet, smoking, socioeconomic status, pre-existing health problems, and exposure to air pollution.
In an accompanying editorial along with the published study, Christina Wee M.D., M.P.H., deputy editor of the journal and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School wrote, “Biologically, it is plausible that coffee could actually confer some direct health benefits.”
She noted that though the study adjusted for other factors, like socioeconomic status, it is difficult to isolate the impact of coffee on an individual’s health. She continued, “We can’t say for sure that it’s the coffee drinking per se that leads to the lower mortality risk.”
So, do experts think we should be drinking more coffee, and maybe even adding sugar to it? Maybe not so quickly. Dr. Wee hypothesized that other factors that go along with being a coffee drinker may come into play with the results. She also noted in her editorial that coffee drinks that added sugar only reported a teaspoon of sugar, which is far less than many common sugar-sweetened coffee beverages.
“Nonetheless, the decision whether to consume coffee (and whether to add sugar) is not a random event and is influenced by difficult-to-measure factors, including occupation and work demands and hours, socioeconomic and emotional stressors, the availability of leisure time, and intolerance to coffee from uncaptured health or clinical reasons, to name just a few,” she wrote.
While the study doesn’t point to definitive evidence of prolonged life (unfortunately coffee just makes us feel invincible—it can’t make us live forever), it definitely makes our morning cup a bit more enjoyable.
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