Heavy Coffee Consumption Does Not Harm Heart

A study published last week has surprisingly shown that long-term, heavy use of coffee does not influence the risk of heart disease for most people.

The study followed as many as 128,000 men and women over a period of 20 years and its results showed that filtered coffee did not raise the risk of heart disease. The results do not refer to espresso coffee or French-style brews.

The researchers in the two teams involved in the study, the Harvard and the Madrid teams, used data from two ongoing studies: the all-male Health Professionals Follow-up Study, begun in 1986, and the all-female Nurses' Health Study, begun in 1976. All participants in these studies fill out periodic questionnaires on their health habits, diet and exercise habits, and undergo regular physical examinations.

Researchers found no association between filtered coffee consumption and the risk of heart disease, as well as no link between heart disease and how much caffeine, tea or decaffeinated coffee people drank.

However, this does not mean that it is a good idea to start overloading with coffee. "We can't exclude the association between coffee consumption and the risk of (heart disease) in small groups of people," says Dr. Rob van Dam of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

Also, there is a tendency among heavy coffee drinkers to smoke and drink alcohol more often, which clearly impacts heart health and increase the risk of heart disease. More than half the women and 30 percent of men in the studies who drank six or more cups of coffee a day were found more likely to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol and use aspirin, and less likely to drink tea, exercise and take vitamin supplements. With these factors accounted for, there was no difference found between heavy coffee drinkers and light coffee drinkers.

Researchers published their results in the journal "Circulation".

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