Research Shows That People Who Drink 3 Cups Of Coffee A Day Tend To Live Longer
Our morning cuppa might be the key to a longer life.
By Sheryll Paul
Two of the largest studies ever have been done to show the relationship between coffee drinkers and their lifespan
Both studies were published by the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The first study was carried out on 520,000 people living in 10 different European countries while the second study was on 185,000 people living in non-white populations. These included people of African-American, Latino, Japanese-American, Hawaiian and Native American descent.
"We looked at multiple countries across Europe, where the way the population drinks coffee and prepares coffee is quite different. The fact that we saw the same relationships in different countries is kind of the implication that its something about coffee rather than its something about the way that coffee is prepared or the way it's drunk," an author of the study said.
The researchers found that drinking more coffee is linked to a lower risk of death, especially from heart disease
They did this by analysing data from people above the age of 35. They asked them at the beginning of the study the amount of coffee they usually drank and then looked at the numbers of deaths over the next 16 years.
The people who drank two or more cups a day had an 18% lower risk of death compared to non-coffee drinkers.
The studies also suggest that drinking 3 cups of coffee a day could help you live longer
Those who drank three or more cups of coffee a day had a lower mortality risk among the other participants.
The studies also show an inverse relationship between the consumption of coffee and liver disease, cancer, suicide, digestive diseases and circulatory diseases.
These studies also find a much stronger biological possibility that coffee can indeed make you live longer.
If these findings are indeed true, it could mean that an extra cup of coffee a day would extend the life of a man by three months and a woman by one month
However, don't go running to make another cup of coffee just yet.
It's wise to note that these studies aren't perfect
It is important to remember one of the first things we learnt in Science class. Around the time you learnt to 'hafal' the "to investigate the relationship between [manipulated variable] and [responding variable]".
You learnt this very important lesson:
Correlation doesn't equal causation.
This means that though there is a link between lots of coffee and a longer lifespan, there's no actual proof that coffee is causing people to live longer.
Coffee hasn't been confirmed as an elixir of life just yet though
Though the people who drank more coffee lived longer in the study, a lot of other factors weren't taken into account. For example, people who could afford to have 3 cups of coffee a day might just be richer and be able to afford better healthcare, thus prolonging their life.
Until research proves an actual biological association between coffee and lifespan, there is no real evidence that coffee itself makes you live longer.