By Elizabeth Barker
Think twice before kicking your coffee habit. In a recent study of about 400,000 older adults, researchers from the National Cancer Institute determined that coffee-drinking could help boost your longevity.
At the start of the study, each participant was between the ages of 50 and 71, had no history of heart disease or cancer, and answered a series of questions about coffee consumption and health-related behaviors like smoking and exercise. At a 12-year follow-up, researchers found that participants who drank the most coffee were up to 15 percent less likely to have died since the study’s beginning. While there was no link between coffee consumption and cancer-related death, coffee drinkers had a lower incidence of death due to heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, injuries and accidents, diabetes and infections.
According to the study’s authors, the longevity benefits of coffee-drinking seemed to be similar for those who sipped two to three cups per day and those who guzzled greater amounts of java. Although the study didn’t look at how or why coffee might help lengthen your lifespan, past research suggests that moderate coffee consumption may protect against diabetes and cardiovascular disease. There’s also some evidence that drinking several cups of coffee each day may help protect against depression, as well as preserve brain health as you age.
As noted by study author Neal Freedman, Ph.D., not all coffee drinks are created equal when it comes to their health value. “More and more people [in the United States] drink espresso-based drinks that typically include a lot of fat, for example cream and caramel on top,” Freedman points out in a recent interview in the Journal of Caffeine Research. “All of these preparation differences may affect associations with disease.”
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