Coffee Drinkers Might Live LongerFor women, especially, the brew could boost heart health, study findsBy Kathleen Doheny, HealthDay ReporterMONDAY, June 16 (HealthDay News) -
Good news for coffee lovers: Drinking up to six cups a day of caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee daily won't shorten your life span, a new study shows.In fact, coffee might even help the heart, especially for women, the researchers found.
"Our results suggest that long-term, regular coffee consumption does not increase the risk of death and probably has several beneficial effects on health," said lead researcher Dr. Esther Lopez-Garcia, assistant professor of preventive medicine at the Autonoma University in Madrid, Spain.Her team published its findings in the June 17 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.Lopez-Garcia stressed that the findings may only hold true only for healthy folk. "Peoplewith any disease or condition should ask their doctor about their risk, because caffeine still has an acute effect on short-term increase of blood pressure," she said.
the study, the Spanish team looked at the relationships between coffee drinking and the risks of dying from heart disease, cancer, or any cause in almost 42,000 men who participated in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study and more than 84,000 women who had participated in the Nurses' Health Study. At the study start, all participants were free of heart disease and cancer.The participants completed questionnaires every two to four years, including information about their coffee drinking, other dietary habits, smoking and health conditions.
The research team looked at the frequency of death from any cause, death due to heart disease, and death due to cancer among people with different coffee-drinking habits, comparing them to those who didn't drink the brew.They also controlled for other risk factors, including diet, smoking and body size.The researchers found that women who drank two or three cups of caffeinated coffee daily had a 25 percent lower risk of death from heart disease during the follow-up (from 1980 to 2004) than non-drinkers.
Women also had an 18 percent lower death risk from a cause other than cancer or heart disease compared with non-coffee drinkers.For men, drinking two to three cups of caffeinated coffee daily was a "wash" -- not associated with either an increased or a decreased risk of death during the follow up, from 1986 to 2004.The lower death rate was mainly due to a lower risk for heart disease deaths, the researchers found, while no link was discovered for coffee drinking and cancer deaths. The relationship did not seem to be directly related to caffeine, according to the researchers, since those who drank decaf also had a lower death rate than those who didn't drink either kind of coffee.
In the past, studies have come up with mixed results on the health effects of coffee, with some finding coffee increased the risk of death and others not.More recently, research has found coffee drinking linked with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes and some cancers, and preventing the development of cardiovascular disease, Lopez-Garcia said.The strength of her current study, she said, includes the large number of participants and long follow-up period.
While the study is interesting, it does have its shortcomings, said Dr. Peter Galier, an internal medicine specialist, former chief of staff at Santa Monica UCLA and Orthopedic Hospital and associate professor of medicine at the University of California Los Angeles' David Geffen School of Medicine.Self-reporting is one shortcoming, he said, because people may have under- or over-reported their coffee consumption, for instance. "I think what this study tells us is not so much that coffee is the answer to everything," he said. But, rather, that some compounds, such as the antioxidants found in coffee, may be healthy.
Galier's advice for consumers: "I would tell them to weigh the subjective risk of their coffee consumption," he said. For instance, "if they love coffee, but it makes them jittery, and they can't sleep, the need to adjust it," he said. "Look at your symptoms," he tells patients. "If decaf is no problem, I wouldn't put a limit on that."The research was funded by grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
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The History of Coffee
1. The history of coffee is as rich as the brew itself , dating back more than a thousand years. The first coffee plants are said to have come from the Horn of Africa on the shores of the Red Sea. Originally, coffee beans were taken as a food and not as a beverage. East African tribes would grind the coffee cherries together, mixing the results into a paste with animal fat. Rolled into little balls, the mixture was said to give warriors much-needed energy for battle. Later, around the year 1000 AD, Ethiopians concocted a type of wine from coffee berries, fermenting the dried beans in water. Coffee also grew naturally on the Arabian Peninsula, and it was there, during the 11th century that coffee was first developed into a hot drink.
2. The so-called stimulating properties of coffee were thought by many during these ancient times to give a sort of religious ecstasy, and the drink earned a very mystical sort of reputation, shrouded in secrecy and associated with priests and doctors. So, it is not surprising that two prominent legends emerged to explain the discovery of this magic bean.
3. According to one story, a goat-herder noticed that his herd became friskier than usual after consuming the red cherries of a wild coffee shrub. Curious, he tasted the fruit himself. He was delighted by its invigorating effects, and was even spotted by a group of nearby monks dancing with his goats. Soon the monks began to boil the bean themselves and use the liquid to stay awake during all-night ceremonies. The other story is about a Muslim dervish who wascondemned by his enemies to wander in the desert and eventually die of starvation. In his delirium, the young man heard a voice instructing him to eat the fruit from a nearby coffee tree. Confused, the dervish tried to soften the beans in water, and when this failed, he simply drank the liquid. Interpreting his survival and energy as a sign of God, he returned to his people, spreading the faith and the recipe.
4. The cultivation of coffee began sometime in the fifteenth century, and for many centuries to follow, the Yemen province of Arabia was the world'sprimary source of coffee. The demand for coffee in the Near East was very high. The beans leaving the Yemeni port of Mocha for trade with Alexandria and Constantinople were highly guarded. In fact, no fertile plants were allowed to leave the country. Despite the restrictions, Muslim pilgrims from across the globe during their pilgrimages to Mecca managed to smuggle coffee plants back to their homelands, and coffee crops soon took root in India.
5. Coffee also made its way into Europe around this time through the city of Venice, where fleets traded perfumes, teas, dyes and fabrics with Arabic merchants along the Spice Route. The beverage eventually gained popularity with the masses when street lemonade vendors began selling it in addition to cold beverages. Many European merchants grew accustomed to drinking coffee overseas and brought it back with them.
6. By the middle of the 17th century the Dutch dominated the world's merchant shipping industry, and they introduced large-scale coffee cultivation to their colonies in Indonesia on the islands of Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi and Bali. Coffee arrived in Latin America several decades later, when the French brought a cutting of a coffee plant to Martinique. But when a rare plant disease spread through the coffee fields of Southeast Asia in the mid 19th century, Brazil emerged as the world's foremost coffee producer, an honor the country still holds today.
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