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CNC-Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology researchers in Portugal report that regular, moderate coffee consumption (three cups per day) not only contributes to a longer life but also enhances the quality of those additional years by reducing the risk of major age-related diseases and maintaining better overall health. Coffee consumption's perception has shifted from potentially harmful to potentially beneficial over the last several decades. Scientific understanding of the underlying mechanisms by which coffee's primary components, namely caffeine and chlorogenic acids, influence fundamental biological processes and are understood to have alertness, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, though how these might be involved in aging remains unclear.
Beyond the primary components, coffee is a complex mixture of thousands of potentially bioactive substances, most of which lack comprehensive study of their impact, making it difficult to break down the specific effects of individual components on human health. With coffee being the most consumed beverage in the world after water, what we can observe through large population studies may reveal its overall effect on human health . In the study, "Impact of coffee intake on human aging: Epidemiology and cellular mechanisms," published in Ageing Research Reviews , researchers reviewed over 50 epidemiological studies from different regions and ethnicities, analyzing patterns of coffee consumption and their association with mortality data , healthspan indicators, and various disease metrics withing the combined cohort of nearly 3 million individuals.
Results indicate that regular, moderate coffee consumption not only contributes to a longer life but also enhances the quality of those additional years by reducing the risk of major age-related diseases and maintaining better overall health. Moderate and regular intake correlated with a 17% reduction in all-cause mortality rates, fewer age-related diseases, and an extension of healthy life span by approximately 1.8 years.
Coffee drinking was correlated to lower functional deterioration in aging, mitigating memory loss, mood, and physical condition. The analysis also found consistent links between moderate coffee intake and reduced major causes of mortality, including cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, cancer, and respiratory disease-related deaths. With a total cohort size of nearly 3 million participants, the current review has considerable statistical significance, increasing the confidence in the observed associations between coffee intake and reduced mortality from major causes.
The study authors also introduce the concept of caffeine as a "normalizer," reframing it as a stabilizing agent for physiological systems, as opposed to its traditional status as a psychostimulant. This perspective shift would radically redefine how coffee is thought of, researched, and consumed, moving it away from the concept of a stimulant and into a broader category of routine health optimization. The research was funded by coffee industry companies illycaffè, JDE Peet's, Lavazza, Nestlé, Paulig, and Tchibo through their collective non-profit, the Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee (ISIC).
While ISIC emphasizes scientific integrity and often collaborates with reputable institutions to maintain research credibility, having exclusively coffee industry companies as stakeholders reasonably raises concerns about selection bias in favor of highlighting positive findings. In relation to the current review, individuals who drink three cups of coffee daily might be experiencing better health outcomes due to improved well-being related to social or economic status. Alternately, people with certain medical conditions or diseases that carry higher mortality risks may be self-excluded from drinking coffee at moderate levels.
For example, studies on moderate coffee consumption might regularly exclude people with hypertension, arrhythmias, heart disease, anxiety, sleep and digestive disorders. As mentioned previously, coffee is currently the most frequently consumed beverage in the world besides water, which will make any study that correlates health benefits to the beverage highly comforting to those of us seeking a little confirmation bias with their third cup. More information: Cátia R.
Lopes et al, Impact of coffee intake on human aging: Epidemiology and cellular mechanisms, Ageing Research Reviews (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.
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