Coffee drinking may actually prolong life

In fact, they suggest that men and women who drink two or three cups of coffee a day, even decaffeinated, had a slightly decreased risk of death from heart disease. However, the authors caution that this may not be directly due to the coffee, but to something else that is common to coffee drinkers.

For the study the authors used data from participants who were free of cancer and heart disease on enrollment in two large epidemiological studies, one involving American women and the other involving American men. The data on women came from 84,214 women who took part in the Nurses' Health Study and the data on men came from 41,736 men who took part in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study.

The participants filled in questionnaires every two to four years that included questions about their coffee consumption (for instance how much and how often), other dietary habits, smoking status, and health.

The scientists then looked at how different kinds of coffee drinking patterns correlated with frequency of death from any cause, from death due to heart disease, and from death due to cancer.

The results showed that:
Women who drank 2 to 3 cups of caffeinated coffee a day had a 25 per cent lower risk of death from heart disease over the follow up period (84 214 women from 1980 to 2004), compared with women who did not drink coffee.

Women who drank 2 to 3 cups of caffeinated coffee a day also had an 18 per cent lower risk of death from causes not related to cancer or heart disease, over the follow up period compared to women who did not drink coffee.

Men who drank 2 to 3 cups of caffeinated coffee a day showed no higher or lower risk of death during the follow up period, 41 736 men from 1986 to 2004) compared with men who did not drink coffee.

During the follow up, 2368 of the women died from heart disease, 5011 from cancer, and 3716 from other causes.

2049 of the men died from heart disease, 2491 from cancer, and 2348 from other causes.

Overall, taking into account other risk factors such as body size, smoking, diet, and some specific dieases, people who drank more coffee were less likely to die during the follow up period.

The main reason for this was the lower risk of heart disease among the coffee drinkers.

There was no link between coffee drinking and death due to cancer.

Generally, there appeared to be no difference in the link to death rates between caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee, they both appeared to have the same link with lower death rates compared with people who did not drink any coffee at all.

However, drinking decaffeinated coffee was linked to a small reduction in deaths from all causes and cardiovascular (CVD) diseases.