This might be the perfect time to justify your love affair with caffieine - as according to new research, drinking three to five cups of coffee can help you to live longer.
Moderate consumption reduces the risk of dying prematurely from heart disease, Parkinson’s Disease and Type 2 Diabetes. The results were published in the journal Circulation and come from three large on-going studies with a total of 208,501 male and female participants.
It also appears to reduce the risk of suicide. These findings also apply to decaf coffee as the benefits are linked to the plant compound rather than the stimulant.
Lead scientist Ming Ding, from the Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health in the US, said: 'Bioactive compounds in coffee reduce insulin resistance and systematic inflammation. That could explain some of our findings. However, more studies are needed to investigate the biological mechanisms producing these effects.'
However, it's probably not time to ditch the gym membership and your 5 a day just yet. Emily Reeve, the senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said: ‘It is important to remember that maintaining a healthy lifestyle is what really matters if you want to keep your heart healthy, not how much coffee you drink.'
‘Previous research suggests that drinking up to five cups of coffee a day is not harmful to your cardiovascular health, and this study supports that. But more research is needed to fully understand how coffee affects our body and what it is in coffee that may affect a person’s risk of heart attack or stroke.’
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.