Besides water, coffee is the Germans’ favorite drink. Coffee can have health benefits – especially at a time of day.
Several studies have already confirmed that coffee is healthy in moderation.
Now researchers have discovered something special: coffee is healthier at a certain time of day than at others. Therefore, it may be best to only reach for the brown hot drink in the morning. Because people who only drink coffee in the morning have a lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease than those who drink it all day. Regardless of the amount consumed.
This is the result of a study by the European Society of Cardiology. The authors examined the nutritional and health data of 40,725 adults aged 18 and over from 1999 to 2018. They included both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee and divided the consumption times into three blocks: morning (4 a.m. to 11:59 a.m.), afternoon (12 p.m. to 4:59 p.m.) and in the evening 5 p.m. to 3:59 a.m.).
From this, they identified two consumption groups: morning consumers or all-day consumers. At the end of an average observation period of around ten years, 4,295 deaths were recorded, 1,268 of which were due to cardiovascular disease and 934 were caused by cancer.
They compared people who didn’t drink coffee at all with those who only drank it in the morning. Accordingly, morning coffee consumers had a 16 percent lower risk of death. Their risk of dying from cardiovascular disease was even 31 percent lower.
However, there was no difference compared to those who reached for the hot cup all day. The amount of coffee consumed in the morning didn’t matter – regardless of whether they drank less than one or more than three cups of coffee a day. Doing this in the morning was still better than other consumption patterns in terms of risk of death. And the question of whether it was caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee didn’t matter.
In a press release, study author Dr. Lu Qi: “This is the first study to examine the timing of coffee drinking and the health consequences. Our results show that it’s not just whether you drink coffee or how much you drink, but also the time of day We don’t usually give advice on when to drink coffee in our nutritional advice, but maybe we should think about it in the future.”
However, there is no explanation for the results. Qi speculates: “This study does not tell us why drinking coffee in the morning reduces the risk of death from cardiovascular disease. One possible explanation is that drinking coffee in the afternoon or evening affects circadian rhythms and hormone levels such as melatonin “This in turn leads to changes in cardiovascular risk factors such as inflammation and blood pressure.”
In an accompanying article, Professor Thomas F. Lüscher from the Royal Brompton Hospital in London explains the possible mechanism: “In fact, many people who drink coffee all day suffer from sleep disorders. In this context, it is interesting that coffee appears to suppress melatonin, an important sleep-promoting mediator in the brain.”