Is coffee good for you?

credit: 123RF

Researchers from the British Medical Journal recently said that drinking coffee in moderation is not only harmless, but also beneficial to the body.

They collected evidence from more than 200 studies and found that people who drank three to four cups of coffee a day had lower mortality and heart disease rates than those who did not drink coffee. In addition, coffee drinking was also associated with a lower risk of cancer, diabetes, liver disease and dementia.

But they also say that coffee is not recommended for pregnant women and may slightly increase the risk of fractures.

The study used mainly observational data, which is not very convincing, so no firm conclusions can be made about cause and effect, but their findings certainly support other recent reviews and research on coffee intake. Therefore, they say that except for pregnancy and women prone to fractures, "coffee is safe in daily consumption patterns", so they believe that coffee can be safely tested in randomized trials.

Coffee is one of the most common beverages in the world and is good for health, but the existing evidence is not convincing enough and randomized controlled trials are needed to ensure the credibility of this claim.

In order to better study the impact of coffee on health, a team led by Robin Poole, a registered expert in public health at the University of Southampton, collaborated with scholars from the University of Edinburgh to review 201 observational studies and 17 clinical studies from various countries. This review combines previous meta-analyses and makes a high-level summary of this topic. Drinking coffee is always considered to reduce mortality and even the probability of heart disease, and the benefits are maximized when drinking three cups a day. Even drinking more than three cups will not be harmful, but the benefits will not be that great.

Coffee has also been linked to a lower risk of several cancers, including prostate, endometrial, skin and liver, as well as type 2 diabetes, gallstones and gout, but is best for liver disease, such as cirrhosis. There is less evidence to suggest decaffeinated coffee has any particular effect, but it has similar benefits.

Some of the studies have adjusted for factors that may affect coffee consumption, habits and health, such as smoking. However, this is not comprehensive and the results vary from study to study. Therefore, the authors cannot rule out the possibility that these factors may have advantages or disadvantages.

Eliseo Guallar of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health commented on the study. He said that while there are generally no downsides to drinking coffee, it should not be used as a means of preventing disease, nor should people assume that coffee can cure all illnesses.

But studies have shown that some people may experience unexpected side effects from drinking coffee. He wrote that drinking high doses of coffee does have "substantial uncertainty." Finally, it should be emphasized that coffee is often paired with products rich in refined sugars and unhealthy fats, which may have adverse effects on health.

Those caveats aside, "coffee consumption in moderation is not considered unsafe and can be part of a healthy diet for most adults," he concluded.

This article is translated from medicalxpress and published by translator Imagine under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.