Live Longer

NPR News is a great radio news station. It has articles on various aspects of culture and world news. Yesterday (May 17th, 2012) it had an article titled "Can Coffee Help You Live Longer? We Really Want To Know." This article specialized in a study done by Neal Freedman and his colleagues from the National Cancer Institute. In this study they looked at the relationship between coffee and Health in which they analyzed nearly 500,000 Americans from the age of 50 to 71 years old. Within this study they found that coffee drinkers had modestly lower risks of deaths than the non-drinkers within the study. Using this study a "modest" drinker is defined as a person who drinks around 2 or 3 cups of coffee a day. According to the study it says “Those who drank at least two or three cups a day were about 10 percent or 15 percent less likely to die for any reason during the 13 years of the study.” Just be weary of drinking more than this because there might be an inverse association after that. Those who drank modestly were cutting their risk of heart disease, lung disease, strokes, injuries, accidents, diabetes, and infections. This study didn’t necessarily prove that coffee made someone live longer, but it did prove that it may help someone to be healthier.

          This study used all kinds of coffee. Therefore, it could not pinpoint which kind of coffee is the best for you or even how they differ from one another.

          All of this research is there to help you know that coffee lovers are not hurting themselves and just might be helping themselves to stay a little bit healthier for a while longer down the road. So, don’t be afraid to grab your favorite cup of Joe, cappuccino, or latte just be weary of the calorie count.

Enjoy your coffee for all it’s worth!