It’s another home run for coffee consumption — as long as it’s black and caffeinated, that is.
Drinking one or more cups of plain, leaded coffee a day was associated with a long-term reduced risk of heart failure, according to a review of diet data from three major studies using analytic tools from the American Heart Association.
Compared with non-coffee drinkers, the analysis found the risk of heart failure over time decreased between 5% and 12% for each cup of coffee consumed daily.
Compared with non-coffee drinkers, the analysis found the risk of heart failure over time decreased between 5% and 12% for each cup of coffee consumed daily.
The benefit did not extend to decaffeinated coffee. Instead, the analysis found an association between decaf coffee and an increased risk for heart failure.
Heart failure occurs when a weakened heart fails to supply the body’s cells with enough blood to get the oxygen needed to keep the body functioning properly. People with heart failure suffer fatigue and shortness of breath and have trouble walking, climbing stairs or other daily activities.
“While unable to prove causality, it is intriguing that these three studies suggest that drinking coffee is associated with a decreased risk of heart failure and that coffee can be part of a healthy dietary pattern if consumed plain, without added sugar and high fat dairy products such as cream,” said registered dietitian Penny Kris-Etherton, immediate past chairperson of the American Heart Association’s Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health Council Leadership Committee, in a statement. She was not involved with the research.
Massive data analysis
The study, published Tuesday in the AHA journal Circulation: Heart Failure, analyzed self-reported dietary information from the original Framingham Heart Study. That study, which began in 1948, enrolled over 5,000 people with no diagnosed heart disease who lived in Framingham, Massachusetts. The study has followed those people and their offspring for 72 years over three generations. (CNN)