Healthy living
tended to have worse heart health than their peers. However, these studies often didn’t account for confounding variables, like the fact that heavy coffee drinkers were more likely to be smokers too. These days the tide seems to be turning. Barely a week goes by without a new study linking our favourite beverage to cardiovascular benefits, decreased Alzheimer’s risk or even a higher life expectancy. Case in point? A 2017 review paper, which looked at a staggering 201 meta-analyses, found that ‘coffee consumption was more often associated with benefit than harm for a range of health outcomes’. “Recently we’ve seen more and more research being conducted around the potential health benefits of coffee, with most research concluding that consuming a moderate amount of coffee can have positive health impacts,” says Thomas De-Garnham, founder of British coffee brand Fireheart Coffee. “We at Fireheart welcome this kind of research and would like to see studies continue into the future.” Fireheart isn’t the only coffee brand to take an interest in the research. Take the Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee (ISIC), a not-for-profit organisation comprising six major brands (illycaffe, Jacobs Douwe Egberts, Lavazza, Nestle, Paulig and Tchibo). The institute says it is ‘devoted to the study and disclosure of science related to coffee and health’. According to ISIC’s most recent report, people are becoming increasingly curious about this topic. The report claims that Google searches for “health benefits of drinking coffee” surged by 650% between February 2021 and February 2022. Dr JW Langer, a spokesperson for ISIC, said: “A new generation of people are now beginning to appreciate the complex nutritional components of their trusty morning drink, and the additional beneficial health effects that regular, moderate consumption may offer as part of a balanced diet. A fact that is supported by an increasing volume of scientific research.”
Beans, beans, good for the heart? A good place to start might be a study published in February by researchers at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and Budapest Semmelweis University. This study, the largest of its kind, used data from nearly half a million participants in the UK Biobank. It found a clear link between moderate coffee consumption and better heart health. The participants were divided into three groups: non-coffee drinkers, light-to-moderate coffee drinkers (up to three cups a day), and heavy coffee drinkers. Their cardiovascular health was tracked for an average of 11 years. Compared with the non-coffee drinkers, the middle group had a 12% lower risk of overall mortality, a 17% lower risk of death from cardiovascular diseases, and a 21% lower risk of stroke.
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As well as looking at health outcomes, the study also included cardiac magnetic resonance imaging from some 32,000 people. This gave the researchers an inside look at how coffee might affect the cardiovascular system.
“In comparison to zero coffee intake, light- moderate and high coffee consumption were associated with favourable cardiovascular traits, both in terms of cardiac and arterial health,” says study author Professor Steffen Petersen, of the William Harvey Research Institute at QMUL. “Results from our study and others all seem to suggest that the health benefits of moderated ground coffee consumption outweigh its potential risks.”
“These findings are consistent with many other observational trials that associate moderate coffee consumption with benefit to cardiovascular health.”
Dr Charlotte Mills, University of Reading
He stresses that these benefits are likely to tail off at higher levels of coffee consumption. In 2021, a different UK Biobank study concluded that long-term heavy consumption might actually increase people’s risk of cardiovascular disease. On top of that, this study was mainly concerned with health impacts at a population level. It didn’t examine why coffee might improve heart health, or even establish a causal connection. “This is observational research – it doesn’t prove causality,” says Dr Charlotte Mills, a lecturer in nutritional sciences at the University of Reading, who wasn’t involved in the study. “Is coffee cardioprotective or are healthier people more likely to consume coffee? That said, these findings are consistent with many other observational trials that associate moderate coffee consumption with benefit to cardiovascular health, and so it looks promising.”
650% ISIC 53
The amount that Google searches for “health benefits of drinking coffee” surged by between February 2021 and February 2022.
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