Live A Little Longer With Coffee

The National Institutes of Health conducted the largest study ever done on the impact of coffee on health. The researchers studied the coffee drinking habits of more than 400,000 AARP members who were between the ages of 50 to 71 during 1995 and 1996, and followed them through to 2008.

The results show that regular coffee drinkers didn’t die as often as others did during the time period covered by the study. Coffee also seemed to lower the risk of a variety of diseases, although cancer risk was unaffected. In the research, decaf or regular coffee had about the same health effects.

The study didn’t discover exactly what in coffee might make people live a little longer, only that people who drink coffee seemed to die less often of diabetes, heart disease, stroke and accidents. The findings were based strictly on an association between people’s habits and their resulting health.

“It’s estimated there are 1,000 or more compounds in coffee,’’ lead researcher Neal Freedman told The New York Times. “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.”