Drinking Coffee in Moderation Can Actually Lower the Risk of Major Health Conditions, New Study Finds

As if you needed another reason to support your caffeine addiction.

Here's your official green light to keep drinking coffee: It turns out that drinking a moderate amount of coffee or caffeine regularly can reduce your risk of developing cardiometabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, and stroke, according to a new study .

“Consuming three cups of coffee, or 200-300 mg caffeine, per day might help to reduce the risk of developing cardiometabolic multimorbidity in individuals without any cardiometabolic disease,” says study lead author Chaofu Ke, M.D., Ph.D. in a press release .

Definition

Cardiometabolic multimorbidity (CM) is defined as having at least two of the following conditions at the same time: type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, and stroke.

The study evaluated the associations between coffee, tea, and caffeine intake and the risk of new-onset CM. For the UK study, 172,315 participants' results were analyzed for caffeine intake, and 188,091 were analyzed for tea and coffee intake from the UK Biobank, a large database of biomedical data. The participants selected for the study had no cardiometabolic diseases and had a clear indication of caffeine intake.

There's good news for coffee lovers: Drinking a moderate amount of caffeine is actually better for your heart health than drinking none at all. Researchers discovered that those with moderate intake of coffee (three cups per day) or caffeine (200-300 mg per day) had a 48.1% or 40.7% reduced risk of developing new-onset CM when compared to non-drinkers or drinkers of less than 100mg of caffeine per day. And while moderate coffee and caffeine consumption is the healthiest, all levels have an inverse association with a new development of CM. So don't give up your cup of Joe just yet.

Drinking moderate amounts of coffee, tea, and caffeine can reduce the risk of each developmental stage of CM, the study revealed. These stages include going from a disease-free state to developing one cardiometabolic disease to eventually progressing to CM.

“The findings highlight that promoting moderate amounts of coffee or caffeine intake as a dietary habit to healthy people might have far-reaching benefits for the prevention of CM,” says Ke.

Related: Coffee and Tea Have Their Benefits—But Which One Is Better for Your Health?

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