DOES DRINKING COFFEE HELP YOU TO LIVE LONGER?
Amid new claims that lots of coffee is good for your health, we look at the pros and cons of your caffeine habit
If, like me, you are a serious coffee drinker, you will know only too well the guilt that comes with drinking several cups a day. Despite emerging evidence to the contrary, there remained nagging doubts that this was not a healthy habit, and the derision of non-coffee drinkers seemed to confirm it.
So it is with joyous one-upmanship that we now learn that coffee — and not just one daily cup, but up to seven — can cut the risk of early death, leaving us less likely to die of some cancers and cardiovascular disease than those who have cleansed the drink from their diets.
In one of the largest studies of its kind, researchers at the US National Cancer Institute in Maryland analysed the demographic and health data of almost half a million Britons over a decade to reach their conclusion — that the more coffee we drink (up to a point), the better off we are.
They reported in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine that those who drank a cup a day were found to have an 8 per cent lower risk of dying early than those who drank less, but that increased to 12 per cent among people who drank two to five cups a day. Best off were those consuming a regular six or seven cups of coffee, who were 16 per cent less likely to die from any disease during the duration of the study. Overall, coffee drinkers had 10-15 per cent greater longevity than abstainers. Even better, the type of coffee didn’t seem to matter — instant, decaf or regular roasted all came up trumps.
This news has left the growing java brigade full of beans. Figures released by the British Coffee Association in April showed that the UK’s coffee consumption has grown to 95 million cups a day, an increase of 25 million since 2008.
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“These latest findings are not a surprise, just confirmation of what scientists have known for a while,” says Roel Vaessen, the secretary-general of the Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the rigorous study of our favourite bean.
“Coffee is a plant-based drink that consists of 500 known components, many of which are good for your health. It is finally shaking off its unhealthy image. There’s no reason to be ashamed of drinking it.”
And here are the reasons why . . .
“We always hear about matcha tea, but coffee has more nutrients”
“We always hear about matcha tea, but coffee has more nutrients”
It’s crammed with antioxidants
Perhaps the biggest revelation for most of us is that there is so much more to coffee than caffeine. In the latest study, the researchers highlighted that caffeine was probably not responsible for the healthful benefits.
Ian Marber, the nutrition therapist, says that coffee has had a bad rap nutritionally, when it is actually one of the biggest providers of disease-fighting antioxidants that mop up damaging free radicals in the body. “We hear about all of these trendy, antioxidant-rich drinks like matcha and yerba mate tea, but mundane old coffee more than matches them in terms of nutrients,” he says.
“Coffee contains very large amounts of several powerful antioxidants such as hydrocinnamic acids and polyphenols that have been linked to the prevention of cancer and other diseases.”
The more you drink, the more you get.
It’s not as bad for your bones as was thought
We were long advised to reduce coffee intake because the caffeine would leach calcium from the skeleton, leaving heavy consumers with a higher risk of osteoporosis.
That, it seems, is not as clear cut. On its website, the National Osteoporosis Society states: “A high caffeine intake has been found to increase the amount of calcium lost in urine and, in theory, this may lead to loss of bone strength if enough calcium is not taken to replace it.” But it adds that you should not stop drinking it, since it causes “only a slight imbalance”.
Last year a review conducted by a team of scientists led by Dr Robin Poole, a researcher in public health at the University of Southampton, did suggest that women who drank high amounts of coffee were at slightly higher risk of developing fractures, but again concluded in The BMJ that coffee drinking was more likely to benefit health than to harm it. In 2013 Swedish researchers studying 61,000 women for about 20 years found four or more cups a day was also associated with a tiny decrease in bone density, but not with a higher risk of broken bones.
Decaffeinated is an option
A downside of coffee consumption is that, depending on your tolerance, the caffeine can disrupt sleep. “The European Food Safety Agency recommends people consume no more than 400mg of caffeine a day, which is approximately four cups,” Marber says.
It’s easy to see why. Research by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine showed that the sleep time of participants who consumed a coffee at bedtime, or even three to six hours before that, found their total sleep time reduced by an hour. Marber says that, since caffeine mimics the actions of the stress hormone cortisol, it is also best avoided when you are overworked or anxious.
Opt for decaffeinated, though, and you should be safe. Whereas brewed coffee contains about 95mg of caffeine per serving on average and a single espresso about 63mg of caffeine, decaf has only a fraction of that amount. In the Maryland study it performed as well as full-strength coffee in terms of protection against disease. “It contains only a residual amount of caffeine — around 0.3 per cent — but all of the other benefits,” Marber says.
It protects the heart
In the latest research, participants were shown to have heart health benefits from drinking coffee, but other studies have produced similarly impressive results. A trial three years ago involving 25,138 men and women at Samsung International Hospital in South Korea found that those who drank three to five cups of coffee a day had the least risk of coronary calcium clogging their arteries, reducing the risk of a heart attack.
That team suggested coffee’s ability to improve insulin sensitivity and blood-sugar control was, in part, responsible. “There’s plenty of evidence that coffee, with its high antioxidant profile, has heart health benefits,” Vaessen says.
It may not even be risky for those with high blood pressure, provided they stick within reasonable limits. Extensive reports have concluded that even people who have several cups a day have no higher rates of raised blood pressure than those who drink coffee less frequently. If you do have hypertension, it is wise not to exceed the recommended dosage of 400mg of coffee a day, says Marber, because it can cause a short, sharp rise in blood pressure. “It’s the caffeine that is problematic,” he explains. “Switching to decaf is better.”
It has cancer-fighting properties
In 2016 the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer reported that it had found an “inverse relationship” between coffee and some types of cancer. Warnings to avoid it for bladder cancer, introduced in 1991, were reversed and the WHO went as far as to suggest that drinking coffee might provide some protection against cancers of the womb and liver. They also found no carcinogenic effects of coffee for cancers of the breast, prostate and pancreas. Decisions were based on extensive reviews of more than 500 studies into the relationship between hot drinks and cancer.
That year scientists at the University of Southern California reported how consumption of any type of coffee — decaf, instant or espresso — decreased the risk of colorectal cancer. “We found that drinking coffee is associated with a lower risk of colorectal cancer, and the more coffee consumed, the lower the risk,” said the lead author, Stephen Gruber.
“There are well-established links between an antioxidant-rich diet and cancer protection,” Marber says.
Just make sure you don’t drink your coffee piping hot. The WHO does warn that high consumption of very hot drinks can be linked to cancer of the oesophagus.
It may boost the brain
We all know that caffeine is responsible for the boost in alertness that coffee delivers. “Athletes love it for the reason it sharpens and focuses their mind,” Vaessen says. “A major study last year showed that this brain-boosting effect helped elite 1,500m runners improve their times by a significant 2 per cent.”
Beyond that, though, it may help the brain in other ways, including slowing down the rate of age-related memory loss. It’s not clear precisely how this works, but some scientists think caffeine blocks a molecule in the body called adenosine, preventing it from stopping the function of norepinephrine, a hormone that has been shown to have positive effects on memory.
A 2017 study published in The Journals of Gerontology found that older women who had almost three cups of coffee a day were less likely to experience cognitive impairment than those who drank less or none. Other researchers have suggested that caffeine may help to protect against Alzheimer’s by stimulating the central nervous system and filling the body with powerful antioxidants that boost cognitive function. “Plant-based antioxidants can stem the damage caused by free radicals to healthy brain cells,” Marber says.
It can enhance your mood
A moderate intake of coffee has been linked to better mood. “It’s been shown that a few cups a day can increase production of certain ‘feel-good’ chemicals in the brain, such as serotonin,” Marber says. When a team of researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health examined the effects on a group of women, they found that the risk of depression was 20 per cent lower among women who drank four or more cups of caffeinated coffee than among those who drank little or none.
Some people should still cut down
For all the good about coffee, it doesn’t suit us all. A high intake has been linked with infertility in some men and women, and pregnant women are advised by the NHS to limit caffeine intake to 200mg a day (or two mugs), because excessive amounts are linked to miscarriages.
Of course, we can also become dependent on caffeine and suffer symptoms such as headaches, irritability and fatigue when we try to cut it out. So how much should we drink? Even the recommended upper limit of 400mg a day may be too much for some.
Vaessen says that we are genetically programmed to metabolise coffee in different ways. “For some people three cups a day is sufficient, while others can tolerate closer to eight or nine cups,” he says. “Most people are very good at self-regulating. If you feel you have had enough, then you probably have.”
Source: https://www.thetimes.co.uk