Drinking coffee may be linked to lower risk of death, even with a little sugar

People in the U.K. who had more than one daily cup of coffee had a lower mortality risk than non-coffee drinkers, a study found.

Contrary to popular myth, forgoing coffee isn’t likely to improve your health. The opposite might be true: Years of research suggests that drinking coffee is linked with a lower risk of death.

The latest addition to that body of research was published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The study looked at around 120,000 people in the U.K. who regularly drank unsweetened or sugar-sweetened coffee over seven years. The findings suggested that those who drank 1.5 to 3.5 cups a day had a lower risk of death during those seven years than non-coffee drinkers, even if they added a teaspoon of real sugar — not artificial sweetener — to every cup.

On the whole, people who drank unsweetened coffee were 16 percent to 21 percent less likely to die during the study period than people who didn’t drink coffee at all, the results showed.

Drinking coffee daily lowers risk of heart disease, new study findsMarch 24, 202203:49But the researchers didn't look at causality, so they couldn't say whether coffee is directly responsible for the outcome.

"Biologically, it is plausible that coffee could actually confer some direct health benefits," said Dr. Christina Wee, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Wee edited the study and wrote an accompanying editorial about the results.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/drinking-coffee-linked-lower-risk-death-rcna31241

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