Diet Study: Coffee, the healthy sin

Even a cup for a long life? A large U.S. study found that coffee has a positive effect on health. Nevertheless, typical coffee drinkers on average live shorter - because they have other unhealthy habits.

Coffee, black: How exactly, study participants drank their coffee was not recorded

At one point, the researchers are certain: On caffeine, it can not be. Because, according to their study data and decaffeinated coffee usually affect the health alike. So if protecting substances from the hot drink a little before heart disease and other diseases, there must be other than the person responsible for the stimulating effect of caffeine.

Neal Freedman of the National Institutes of Health, USA and colleagues analyzed information from approximately 229,000 men and 173,000 women since the mid-nineties in a large study ( NIH AARP Diet and Health Study who participated). All had completed a questionnaire with various information at the beginning of their lifestyle - eating habits, alcohol consumption, sports stint and much more. At baseline, participants were 50-71 years old.
By the year 2008 52.515 participants died, the researchers in the "New England Journal of Medicine" report. The team calculated Freedman now is whether or coffee drinkers rather than later killed, participants who consumed preferably other drinks arrived.

In fact, they died earlier. However, coffee drinkers turned out more often than couch potatoes and as regular consumers of alcohol - in addition they spurned more fruits and vegetables and ate red meat more often . The most obvious connection: Of the men who drank no coffee at all, 4.8 percent smoked. In the group with the highest coffee consumption (six cups a day or more), however, 34.7 percent were smokers. For women it was 8.1 or 48.1 percent. So the bottom line was - once again: Anyone who drinks a lot of coffee, a total of more unhealthy lives.

Helpful rather than harmful

To find out if the coffee is just another bad habit or looks more positive, the researchers calculated that out just enumerated, and other known factors. So they came to the conclusion that coffee protects rather than harms.

"Compared with men who consumed no coffee, had men who drank six or more cups a day, a ten-percent lower risk of dying during the study period," the scientists write. In women, the risk fell by as much as 15 percent. A result similar, previous studies confirmed.

Whether the coffee contained caffeine or not, it did not matter. May affect antioxidants contained in the hot drink is positive, the researchers speculate.
As with all studies based not interview people once in their life habits and then for many years to wait and collect data, there was also the problem that no one can be sure in the end that really the coffee has identified the observed difference. Perhaps there are other behaviors that differ from non-coffee drinker coffee drinkers who were not recorded or observed. Maybe the simple observation can explain the fact that the coffee drinkers have taken to something more fluid than the others - or that they have fewer heavy drinking sugary soft drinks.

In summary, it means: Just because coffee drinkers - if you have eliminated all other factors - living longer, extended coffee not life.