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Would Coffee Prolong Life? Being slightly acidic, coffee is one of the most popular beverages in the world. The marketing efforts of the International Coffee Organization (ICO) to raise coffee consumption around the world have turned coffee drinking into a fine art and encouraged people to think of coffee as an affordable luxury. People in Asian countries like India, Japan and China who are traditionally tea drinkers have been drinking more and more coffee. The latest coffee statistics from ICO indicated about 1.4 billion cups of coffee a day are served worldwide. Having a stimulating effect on humans, coffee can cause or worsen anxiety, especially in high doses and in those with pre-existing anxiety disorders, largely because of its caffeine content. On the other hand, caffeine can help alleviate headaches acutely and is used medically for this purpose, generally in combination with a painkiller. But chronic caffeine use and withdrawal can cause headaches, too. Excessive amount of coffee can no doubt cause unpleasant and even life-threatening adverse effects. 2 typical diterpenes present in coffee, kahweol and cafestol, are known to be associated with increased risk of coronary heart disease by elevation of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) levels in blood. Fortunately, diterpenes are only present in unfiltered coffee and coffee brewed using metal filters, but not in coffee brewed using paper filters. While general consensus in the medical community is that moderate regular coffee drinking in healthy individuals is either essentially harmless or mildly beneficial, controversial findings on human health have been found.
A recent study conducted by researchers from University of South Carolina, Columbia, University of Bath, Bath, United Kingdom and Ochsner Medical Center, New Orleans reported that people aged below 55 who drank 4 cups or more of coffee a day are more likely to die early than non-coffee drinkers. The study was published online August 19, 2013 in ‘Mayo Clinic Proceedings’. Data from the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study representing 43,727 participants, aged between aged 20 and 87, were included in the study. During the 17-year median follow-up, 2512 deaths occurred, 32 percent of which were due to cardiovascular disease (heart disease and stroke). Men who drank more than 28 cups of coffee per week had higher all-cause mortality. Younger (<55 years old) men and women showed a significant association between high coffee consumption (>28 cups per week) and all-cause mortality after stratification based on age. The raised risk of death from any cause is 200 percent for female coffee drinkers and 56 percent for male ones. The link was, however, not found in those aged 55 years and above. Based on the findings, researchers suggested that younger people aged below 55 years old should avoid heavy coffee consumption (averaging >4 cups per day). But they did suggest future studies should be carried out to assess details about the effects of long-term coffee consumption and changes in coffee consumption over time on all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality. The above findings were certainly contradicting to the other study by United States National Institute of Health, which was published on May 17, 2012 in the ‘New England Journal Of Medicine’ More than 402,200 healthy men and women between the ages of 50 and 71 were followed for up to 13 years and it was found that the more coffee a person drank, the less likely he or she was to die early. Women who drank 6 or more cups a day were 15 percent less likely to die early than those who did not consume the beverage and 10 percent less for men who did so. Why would drinking abundant amount of coffee be associated with premature death in younger people but prolonged life in older people? Perhaps, heavy coffee drinkers might have some unknown factors that predispose them to dying earlier, as suspected by some health professionals. Participants who were coffee drinkers in both studies were more likely to drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes and exercise less than non-coffee drinkers. But interestingly, both the findings stood even after all those factors mentioned were taken into account.
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