A Jolt of Java for Longer Life

Posted June 17, 2008, 4:38 pm in Health
Credit Growing Bolder

Want to live longer? Drink up! A study just released by the Harvard School of Public Health and published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, finds that drinking up to six cups of coffee every day may actually cut your risk of dying from heart disease. Esther Lopez-Garcia is the report's lead author. She and her team started following a group of women in 1980, and a group of men in 1986. They spent the last few decades following their patients and found that people who regularly drink coffee over a long term, see several medical benefits.

The main reason for the decrease in death rates for coffee drinkers is that the coffee actually helps lower the rates of heart disease. The study finds that women who drank two to three cups of coffee a day had a 25% lower risk of dying from heart disease than women who didn't drink coffee.

But before you go order that double-tall quad skinny vanilla latte -- beware! Even the study's author says more research is necessary. And other experts say that caffeine can affect your short-term health, making it harder to fall asleep and stay asleep, and causing anxiety.

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Past studies have found that coffee drinkers may have decreased risks of developing Parkinson's disease and diabetes, and some studies suggest that coffee can help reduce the rates of some types of cancers.

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