Opinions about coffee are divided: some avoid caffeine, others cannot start their day without it. Thanks to a large-scale study into the health effects of the drink, anyone who is not yet an avid coffee drinker has a new, good reason to switch to the dark side.
The researchers from Semmelweis University in Hungary and Queen Mary University in London studied more than 500,000 people over ten years to map the effects of coffee. The results were published in the ‘European Journal of Preventive Cardiology’.
What turned out? Those who regularly drank half to three cups of coffee a day had a twelve percent less chance of dying prematurely, and also a fifth less chance of cardiovascular disease or a heart attack. Important to know: those health benefits only occurred when it came to ground coffee, not instant coffee. Those who drank more than three cups a day had no additional positive effects.
In addition to caffeine, the popular drink contains minerals and antioxidants that lower the risk of cancer, type 2 diabetes and dementia. However, coffee has a reputation for leading to high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. Doctor Steffen Petersen, one of the authors of the study, helps dispel this myth with this study. He said moderate coffee consumption is “not harmful to the cardiovascular system, but rather beneficial”.
(Read more below the photo.)
“To our knowledge, this study has the largest volume of data focusing on the cardiovascular effects of coffee,” he told the British newspaper Daily Mail. Of those surveyed, 22 percent did not drink coffee, and 58 percent drank up to three cups a day. According to the results, the second group, who drank half to three cups of coffee a day, had a 12 percent lower chance of dying. In addition, they were 17 percent less likely to die from cardiovascular disease and 21 percent less likely to have a heart attack than those who did not drink coffee. They also had less chance of diabetes.
Researchers believe that the positive effects are due to the fact that our heart structure changes when we drink coffee. The 30,000 cardiovascular MRI scans they examined showed this: the coffee drinkers had healthier hearts, or larger heart chambers, which allowed them to pump more blood. Only good news for the caffeine junkies among us.
Crazy about coffee? View the espresso machine Melitta offer on HLN Shop here.
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