More Coffee Please!

Every once in awhile, solid research comes out that makes me feel OH SO GOOD about myself…and I’m happy to pass that feeling on to the rest of you java lovers!

While previous studies have suggested a link between coffee and longevity, none have shown such strong evidence in support of our coffee habits as two recent studies.

One study found that regular coffee drinking simply leads to a longer life. Why? Lowered risk of stroke and heart attack, major causes of morbidity, and mortality in our world. People who regularly drank 2-4 cups of coffee a day had an 18% lower risk of death as compared with those who did not.

This is a significantly lowered mortality found in coffee drinkers, in 10 European countries and over half a million participants. Coffee was found to not only lower one’s risk of heart disease and stroke, but it also decreased lifetime risk of diabetes, cancer, respiratory, liver and kidney disease.

One of these studies showed that drinking 3 or more cups a day over time decreases your risk of death from ANY disease!  

These health benefits still held strong for the group of smokers who were studied separately from nonsmokers. This doesn’t mean smoking can be balanced by coffee, mind you. It just blows away researchers even more when it comes to coffee’s seemingly magical properties.

This increase in longevity still held regardless of race—always a plus. One study in particular looked specifically at non-white populations—African-American, Asian, Native American, and Latino populations. Basically having any color skin means coffee can benefit you. But this study also suggests that different lifestyle habits and dietary customs across these different populations had no bearing on coffee’s benefits!

By the way, different populations prepare their coffee and drink it differently, yet this also had no bearing on the benefits of that java! Dark or light roast? Instant or premium french roast? Cafe con leche? Black? Didn’t matter.

This good news about coffee isn’t the first we’ve heard. Coffee’s neuroprotective as well as anti-inflammatory properties have been suggested by previous research. Decreased risk of Parkinson’s disease as well as certain autoimmune diseases have been linked to regular coffee consumption.

Caffeine make you jittery? Fear not. It’s NOT the caffeine in coffee that bestows these benefits. The researchers found the same health benefits from decaf coffee! So if you love your caffeine so much you just drink energy drinks, try substituting some of those drinks for coffee.

So just what is it about coffee that has such positive health benefits? Researchers are still working on figuring this out. Coffee is a complex mix of many compounds that need to be studied further if we are to figure out why these benefits exist.

In the meantime, I’m going to make another cup of my favorite instant coffee to make it through the afternoon. I’m not even getting paid to say this this, but the snobbiest of coffee drinkers can never tell when I give them a cup of instant Bustelo!