Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Coffee drinking not harmful and may help against heart disease

Drinking copious amounts of coffee is not harmful to your health, and particularly if you're a woman, may actually protect you from heart disease, new research suggests.

Researchers from Harvard School of Public Health, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School and the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid studied the effects of coffee consumption on 41, 736 men and 86, 214 women over 18-year and 24-year periods respectively.

They discovered that women who drank two to three cups of caffeinated coffee per day had a 25 per cent lower risk of death from heart disease during the study's followup period (1980 to 2004) than non-coffee drinkers. They also had an 18 per cent lower risk of dying from an illness other than cancer or heart disease during followup.

Women who drank five to seven cups of coffee per week had a seven per cent lower risk of death from all causes than non-drinkers.

In men, researchers saw non-statistically significant benefits and no downsides to drinking two to three cups of coffee, or five to seven cups of coffee daily.

The study is published Tuesday in The Annals of Internal Medicine.

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2008/06/16/coffee-habitsstudy.html

http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/08/science_vault_coffee_as_a_cure.php

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