Coffee may cut heart disease

[Guest guest]

I never start my day without a cup of Chock

Full O’ Nuts, That Heavenly Coffee…

Journal reference: ls of Internal Medicine

(vol 148, p 913)

A strong cup of coffee in the morning can

feel like a life saver. Now, one of the largest and longest studies of coffee

drinking suggests that coffee may indeed boost your lifespan – providing

you drink enough of the stuff, that is.

The study tracked 129,000 men and women

over two decades. It found that people who consumed several cups of coffee

every day were less likely to die of heart disease than those who shied away

from the stuff. Heart disease is an umbrella term for conditions including

heart attacks, stroke, and arrhythmia.

The researchers found that women who drank

four to five cups per day were 34% less likely to die of heart disease, while

men who had more than five cups a day were 44% less likely to die.

Consumption caution

The new report adds heft to the hypothesis

that coffee can stem heart disease, perhaps by battling the inflammatory damage

associated with early stage illness.

" It looks like coffee has some effect

that hasn't been established before. The general idea is that coffee is not so

bad, " says study leader Esther -, an epidemiologist at the Autonomous University of Madrid.

Yet - and other experts caution

that it's too early for people to act on the study's findings.

" Before declaring that drinking up to

seven cups of coffee per day is beneficial for health, we should wait for some

other confirmation, " warns Francesco Sofi, an epidemiologist at the University of Florence, who was not

involved in the study.

The new study is not the first to connect

coffee drinking with good health. Over the years, other research has linked

coffee consumption with lower rates of heart attack, liver

cancer and diabetes.

Less risk of death

One limitation of previous studies,

- says, was their measure of coffee drinking – often noted at

the beginning of the study and assumed to stay constant for several years or

even decades.

Her team instead measured coffee

consumption through surveys performed every couple years under two studies of

the health impacts of dozens of dietary and environmental factors, from vitamin

E to drinking alcohol.

Beginning in 1980, the researchers

collected coffee consumption statistics for 86,214 women enrolled in a study of

nurses' health. And in 1986 they began collecting data for 41,736 men involved

in a follow-up study of health professionals.

When -'s team ended their

analysis in 2004, 6,888 men and 11,095 women had died, many from cardiovascular

disease.

For both groups, coffee seemed to give a

health boost. After accounting for other factors such as smoking and obesity,

the researchers found that women who drank four to five cups of coffee per day

were 26% less likely to die from any cause. Men who put down more than five

cups of coffee per day were 35% less likely to die.

" The more coffee you drink the less

risk of mortality you have, " - says.

Differing results

However, her team noticed an even more

dramatic effect in deaths caused by cardiovascular disease. She speculates that

anti-inflammatory compounds found in coffee may be responsible for its apparent

health benefits.

This is in spite of high levels of caffeine,

which might increase the chances of suffering a heart attack by raising blood

pressure. " Our hypothesis is that caffeine has a short term effect, but in

the longer term, [other aspects of coffee are] more important, " she says.

Other studies have, however, shown just the

opposite. In 2007, Sofi analysed more than 20 studies of health and coffee

drinking and found little consensus.

One explanation for these conflicting

results could be genetic. In 2006, a team of Canadian researchers discovered

that people with a mutation in a gene

involved in metabolising caffeine had higher rates of heart attack than

people without the mutation.

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