If coffee is already a part of your morning routine, chances are it's not going anywhere. And according to a pot's worth of research, that's great news.
The most recent study on coffee, published this month in the journal Circulation, found that a three to five cups of the drink daily could help prevent premature death. When people say they live for coffee, they may really mean it.
Researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health concluded that drinkers of both caffeinated and decaf coffee were at a lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease, neurological diseases such as Parkinson's, Type 2 diabetes, and suicide. They analyzed health data from three large ongoing studies for which 167,944 female participants and 40,557 male participants have their food habits evaluated every four years. Currently, the studies include 30 years of data.
The study was observational, meaning that although the participants who drank coffee also had better health outcomes, it doesn't prove that their health outcomes can be attributed to coffee directly. That said, the researchers did find evidence of how coffee may contribute to better health.
"Bioactive compounds in coffee reduce insulin resistance and systematic inflammation," study author Ming Ding, a nutrition doctoral student, said in a statement. "That could explain some of our findings. However, more studies are needed to investigate the biological mechanisms producing these effects."
A large body of research shows coffee is good for your health. Coffee has been dubbed the number one source of antioxidants and just a whiff of the stuff has been found to be de-stressing. Previous studies have associated a coffee drinking habit with reducing the symptoms of Parkinson's disease and depression, lowering the risk of skin cancer for women and slowing the onset of Alzheimer's symptoms.