A major new study found that people who primarily drink coffee in the morning may have a lower risk of dying prematurely — especially from heart disease — than people who sip coffee throughout the day or skip it altogether.
Published in the European Heart Journal, the study examined data on more than 40,000 U.S. adults, shedding fresh light on both the amount and timing of coffee consumption and how it affects longevity.
Drawing from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), as well as the Women’s Lifestyle Validation Study (WLVS) and Men’s Lifestyle Validation Study (MLVS), the study found that morning coffee drinkers had a significantly lower risk of all-cause mortality — by about 16% — than all-day coffee drinkers or non-coffee drinkers.
During the 10-year follow-up period, the morning drinkers were also 36% less likely to have died from cardiovascular disease. Notably, there was no noticeable reduction in cardiovascular-related death risk between all-day coffee drinkers and non the non-drinkers.
Approximately 36% of people in the study were morning coffee drinkers (primarily finishing drinking coffee before midday), 16% of people drank coffee throughout the day (morning, afternoon and evening), and 48% were not coffee drinkers.
“This study doesn’t tell us why drinking coffee in the morning reduces the risk of death from cardiovascular disease,” study author Lu Qi, of Tulane University and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said in an announcement yesterday. “A possible explanation is that consuming coffee in the afternoon or evening may disrupt circadian rhythms and levels of hormones such as melatonin. This, in turn, leads to changes in cardiovascular risk factors such as inflammation and blood pressure.”
The study also found that the amount of coffee morning drinkers consume may be associated with longevity. Morning coffee drinkers benefitted from the lower risks whether they were moderate drinkers (two to three cups) or heavy drinkers (more than three cups). Light morning drinkers (one cup or less) still had decreased risk of death, but it was less noticeable.
Said Qi, “Further studies are needed to validate our findings in other populations, and we need clinical trials to test the potential impact of changing the time of day when people drink coffee.”
Led by a group of U.S.-based researchers, the study comes just as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is approving coffee as a “healthy” drink, so long as it contains fewer than five calories.
Another recent study also found that regular coffee consumption increases humans’ average “healthspan” — i.e. the amount of time people live healthy lives without debilitating diseases — by nearly two years.
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