Older people who drank coffee had a lower risk of mortality overall than others who did not drink coffee. This information appeared according to a study conducted by scientists from the National Institutes (NCI), part of the US National Institutes of Health.
Coffee drinkers are less likely to die from heart disease, respiratory diseases, strokes, injuries, accidents, diabetes, and infections. These data were obtained during a large-scale study of a large number of older people.
Neil Friedman, Ph.D., Division of Epidemiology, Cancer and Genetics, NCI, and colleagues examined the association between coffee intake and risk of death in 400,000 American men and women aged 50 to 71 who participated in the study. In the experiment, the researchers found that the association between coffee and a reduced risk of death increased with the amount of coffee consumed. Relative to men and women who didn’t drink coffee, those who did had a 10 percent lower risk of death.
“Coffee is one of the most widely consumed beverages in America, but the relationship between coffee consumption and risk of death has been unclear. We found coffee consumption is associated with a lower risk of death overall, and death from a number of different causes,” Friedman said. “Although we cannot infer a causal relationship between drinking coffee and reducing the risk of death, we believe these results provide some reassurance that drinking coffee does not have negative health effects.”
The researchers do not provide information about how the coffee was prepared – espresso, brewing, instant, etc.
Scientists cannot yet say exactly how coffee affects the human body. Coffee contains about 1000 components that can affect health in one way or another. Caffeine remains the most studied drug so far.
