By Dr. Mercola
What would you find if you followed three quarters of a million people and took notes on their longevity in light of their coffee drinking habits? That was the premise of two huge studies that lasted nearly 16 years in 10 European countries. What they concluded at the end — that a “moderate” three cups a day is perfectly fine — should be encouraging to people who’ve decided they don’t really care about the outcome; that’s just how dedicated they are to that cup of liquid energy.
But the outcome was this: Coffee may not keep you from dying, but it may impact how soon it occurs. As Reuters reported, men were about 12 percent less likely to die during the follow-up period if they were coffee drinkers compared to men who didn’t indulge at all. Similarly, coffee-drinking women were about 7 percent less likely to die during the same period.1
So the next logical question is, what’s the reason? Well, researchers found that while people differ in numerous ways in those 10 countries, they had one thing in common: For all the participants, coffee was associated with a decreased rate of death from digestive diseases.2,3 For women there was a lower risk of death from circulatory and cerebrovascular diseases. Medical News Today noted:
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“Compared with subjects who never or rarely drank coffee, participants who consumed one cup per day were found to have a 12 percent lower risk of death from cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, respiratory disease, and kidney disease. Mortality risk from these conditions was found to be 18 percent lower for subjects who drank three cups of coffee every day.”4
Scientists from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Agency for…