Drinking Coffee = Longer Life?

This interesting title is based off of a recent study done by the New England Journal of Medicine, which suggests that drinking coffee may decrease the likeliness of dying from many different health problems. These include diabetes, heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, infections and (surprisingly) injuries and accidents.

The study that was conducted in 1995 and 1996 with 229,119 men and 173,141 women who were in the American Association of Retired Persons or AARP program (meaning that the participants are older), results are just being released. The National Institutes of Health inspected the health and diet information from the participants. The problem that the researchers found was that there were many other variables when comparing the effects of coffee in the group that was being studied. Many of the men and women had bad health habits such as smoking, not exercising, poor diets, and drinking alcohol. After the researchers accounted for those variables, the information that found was: the more coffee that a person consumed the less likely they were to die from health conflicts.

The study was conducted and researched for fourteen years and the results were pretty impressive. Men in the study were 10 percent less likely to die, while women were 15 percent less likely. I personally like the fact that during the study it didn’t seem to matter if the coffee was caffeinated or decaffeinated. 

 

Don’t get too excited though, Neal D. Freedman, the study’s main author cautioned that the affiliation between coffee drinking and the lower risk for disease is just that. Just disease. It hasn’t been proven that consuming more coffee will make you live longer or have better health. Dr. Freedman stated that “It’s a modest effect”, “But the biggest concern for a long time has been that drinking coffee is a risky thing to do. Our results, and some of those of more recent studies, provide reassurance for coffee drinkers that this isn’t the case. The people who are regularly drinking coffee have a similar risk of death as nondrinkers, and there might be a modest benefit.”

The study also looked at the link between coffee consumption and cancer risk. The results showed that there was none. The only thing that it showed was that there was a slightly higher risk  of cancer death in the male participants ,but the effect was small.

The next step that Dr. Freedman suggest to take is looking at the different compounds in coffee and see how they react to general health. Dr. Freedman said that:“It’s estimated there are 1,000 or more compounds in coffee, all of these could affect health in different ways. It might be due to one of the many compounds in coffee, or a number of them working together.”

Do you think that these results could have been skewed in any way? Do you think that any of the compounds in coffee could be beneficial to human health? Do you believe that coffee can decrease the risks of all of the different health problems?

I say better be safe than sorry, so drink up!

16 thoughts on “Drinking Coffee = Longer Life?

  1. I think that this was a pretty interesting article, and that the pictures contributed to the article well. I wanted to learn more about this cause so I did some research.
    I learned that coffee has hundreds of different substances in it, and that it could reduce Alzheimer’s disease. It gives off some sort of antioxidant that can help you live longer.

    http://authoritynutrition.com/how-coffee-makes-you-live-longer/

  2. This blog was very interesting to me. Iv had coffee many times before and so has a lot of people in my family. I don’t think coffee is going to do any harm to you but i don’t believe it will have any huge benefits either. But i did some research to see if there were any important benefits. One benefit i found was that it helps to prevent Alzheimers. That is a bad disease in which effects your memory, thinking, and behavior. None of those are good so i believe that it is a good idea to drink coffee everyday.
    http://www.mensfitness.com/nutrition/what-to-drink/6-surprising-health-benefits-of-coffee

  3. I love coffee thats one thing i have to say, but this i had to read about. I think it is true how their is more benfits in drink coffee then not drinking coffee, so if its like that and if coffee keeps you going and taste really good why wouldn’t you drink it? so if more than 193,000 people said they drank more than six or seven cups daily were 35% less likely to have type 2 diabetes than people who drank fewer than two cups daily so then why wouldnt you give it a try? but most people say they dont drink coffee becuase of the bad after taste dosn’t everything thats good as a little bad in it to
    http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/coffee-new-health-food

  4. This blog really interests me. I love coffee. I started researching about this topic and I found that it was completely true. On the Mayo Clinic website I found that drinking coffee doesn’t have a connection with an increased risk of heart disease or cancer. This is good. But, I also discovered that drinking high amounts of unfiltered coffee has some elevations in cholesterol. However, I found that it has its benefits too. The Mayo Clinic website says that it can protect against Parkinson’s disease, liver cancer, and type two diabetes. It also has a high content of antioxidants, which help the decrease of chronic illnesses such as cancer and Alzheimer’s. Thank you for writing this blog. It was very fascinating. Here is the link for the Mayo Clinic website that I used for my research: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/coffee-and-health/AN01354

  5. This blog has some great information. I think this is an interesting topic because so many people drink coffee without even thinking that it has health benefits. I researched the question that you posed that asked if I believed that coffee can decrease the risks of all of the different health problems. I did not find any information supporting that coffee decreased the risk of all diseases. However, I did find that drinking coffee has been shown to decrease the risk of type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, and dementia. I think these benefits are enough to get anyone to start drinking more coffee!

    http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/coffee-new-health-food

  6. Awesome blog. I did some research also and found that coffee can be very beneficial to our health, and studies have even shown that it can help prevent type II diabetes and even help towards heart health like lowering your chances of heart failure. But yes I believe the experiment was a little skewed because the experiment could have been more accurate by having healthy people and have them be non-smokers. I don’t know if coffee could decrease all the different health problems, but there are allot that it does. Like for example studies have shown it also can help with depression and anxiety, also even help people live longer. Here’s a link to some more information… http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/18/health/coffee-health-benefits/index.html

  7. I LOVE coffee and I think that there are a lot of things that it can help with but I also believe that the results cannot be 100% true because other factors could be taking place in how long the coffee drinker lives. I don’t think that coffee will help decrease the chance of dying from a health problem with everyone because everyone has other factors of their health to determine their life span. Also, if you add sugars and cream into your coffee, that is another factor because it increases the calories in your diet for the day.
    This website has pros and cons on coffee drinking and also mentions the different type of health benefits in drinking coffee.
    http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/18/health/coffee-health-benefits/index.html

  8. I enjoy to drink coffee, so when i read this article it appealed to me. I researched the pros and cons of coffee drinking. One benefical factor of coffee is it reduces the risk of Parkinson’s dsiease. Also from coffee consumtion you have the potential to protect against the development of type 2 diabetes. The down side to drinking coffee is an increase in heart disease. Many are aware that drinking coffee allows oneself to stay awake from the cafine, but that can make falling asleep difficult. Also dehydration can be noticable in urine. Although when drinking coffee it does not matter if it is decafe or regular. A website for further research is http://katieb.hubpages.com/hub/coffee-pros-cons.

  9. Awesome blog. I think drinking coffee can help your health do to the compounds that coffee has. Studies show that the more coffee people drank the lower their health hazards were. They linked coffee consumption to better health and a lower risk of premature death, but others linked coffee consumption, caffeine, to heart disease and high blood pressure. Even moderate coffee consumption was linked to better survival odds. Drinking a single cup a day was linked to 6% lower risk of dying among men and a 5% lower risk among women. So drinking coffee can be good or even bad for you. I found more information with your topic.
    http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/16/health/coffee-drinking-longer-life/index.html

  10. I love coffee, and i found alot of pros and cons of coffee. The pros about coffee there is alot of good one such as it protects against diabetes,It lowers the risk of getting kindey stones, There a whole list of pros but now to the cons,there are some bad one.you can get high blood pressure, heart burn, dehydration and if it is drank before bed its more diffitcult to fall asleep and you will react to sudden sounds better and faster.There can be more research done on this website if needed http://katieb.hubpages.com/hub/coffee-pros-cons

  11. I thought you did a fantastic job on your blog! I love drinking coffee so I was interested in this article right away. To answer the questions, yes I think the results could be skewed in some ways because every person that is being tested may have different health backgrounds. Do you think that any of the compounds in coffee could be beneficial to human health? I think some of the compounds in coffee might be beneficial but not all of them. Like said in the article there are more than 1,000 compounds in coffee so it’s hard to tell which ones are helping you. Yes I believe that there are some elements in coffee that are benefiting you in some way or another.
    It’s hard to know for sure if drinking coffee can improve your health or not, but I also know that coffee contains caffeine which is a stimulant and it can make your heart rate and blood pressure go up. I found this and some other good information about coffee benefits at: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/coffee-drinkers-may-live-longer/
    Another website I researched on showed that coffee drinkers are more likely to have bad health habits like smoking, drinking alcohol, eating more red meat and less fruits and veggies, and exercising less. When researches took the bad health habits into consideration they found out that coffee drinkers with these bad habits have a greater risk of death. I found this information at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/no-drinking-coffee-probably-wont-make-you-live-longer/2012/05/17/gIQA1Y36VU_blog.html
    Whether coffee has health benefits or not may be a tough question to answer, but I truly believe that coffee can prevent some of those illnesses, so I’m going to keep drinking it!

  12. It’s a good article but what are the compounds in coffee that can affect the human body in any way. Caffine in coffee is more of a bolt of energy in the morning. It takes about 15 minutes to settle in and the energy is in your body for just about 12 hours at the most. it stimulates the central nervous system, according to the Department of Psychology at the University of Minnesota, by blocking a neurotransmitter called adenosine which normally sedates the body. Caffine is a stimulant which it can aggravate the heart which that can cause more stress and anxiety. It can cause your blood pressure to rise, dehydration, osteporosis, and nervous system stimulation which is all bad because it can increase all activity in the central nervous system. With all the caffine from coffee it can cause adrenaline more often. But the results were skewed because smoking and other things were not prohibited to this situation.

    http://www.livestrong.com/article/88467-effects-caffeine-body/#ixzz2Be07RHM8

  13. I enjoyed reading your blog and I agree that drinking a moderate amount of coffee is good for you, but I also read on WebMD that too much can harm you. I read that if you have more than six cups a day it may cause caffeinism. The symptoms for caffeinism are anxiety and agitation. Also, people who have caffeinism may suffer from caffeine withdrawal if they stop drinking it completely. Coffee that contains caffeine may also cause side effects such as insomnia, nervousness, restlessness, irregular heartbeats, and nausea. This is the site I read this information from.

    http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-supplements/ingredientmono-980-COFFEE.aspx?activeIngredientId=980&activeIngredientName=COFFEE

  14. I thought this blog was great! The topic really caught my attention and made me want to read it. This blog had a lot of valuable information and showed what coffee can help with. I did more research on this topic to find out more statistics you could add to your blog. I found this website:

    —http://www.boston.com/dailydose/2012/05/17/can-drinking-coffee-really-help-you-live-longer-new-study-hardly-conclusive/EdZ3cYbKgZKsGKq7lRMgFO/story.html

    You should really check this site out and maybe include more statistics and what they actually did to find out that this study was true. Also, you could improve your blog by mentioning what coffee can help with but also what coffee can affect with.

  15. Great job, i was very interested in your article because i like to occasionaly drink coffee and i wanted to read and see what this was all about because it might change my mind to drink coffee more,but some of the facts in here seem a little hard to believe so i did a little more research on your topic of coffee. In this link i’ve learned that daily coffee drinkers have a lower risk of diabetes. Coffee can even be protective, people 65 and older have a lower risk of heart disease. So by reading this article its showing that coffee is actually good for you, and its not as bad as everyone has said it is.

    http://www.eatingwell.com/nutrition_health/nutrition_news_information/good_news_about_coffee

  16. Great blog. I had to check it out, because I personally love coffee. I think some of the compounds in coffee can be good for you, but I don’t think they alone can decrease the risks of all of the health problems. I also think the results were skewed, because of the other variables such as smoking and not exercising.
    I did a little more research and found some more information with your topic.
    http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/coffee-new-health-food

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