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Drinking three to four cups of coffee a day is associated with health benefits across a range of diseases and conditions. A review published in The BMJ this week identified 201 meta-analyses of observational research and 17 meta-analyses of interventional research and found that coffee consumption was more often associated with benefit than harm over various health outcomes. 1
The researchers found that drinking three cups of coffee a day was associated with the greatest benefit in terms of cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease, and stroke, when compared with not drinking coffee. Consumption at this level was associated with a 19% lower risk of mortality from cardiovascular disease (relative risk 0.81, 95% confidence interval 0.72 to 0.90), a 16% lower risk of mortality from coronary heart disease (relative risk 0.84, 0.71 to 0.99), and a 30% lower risk of stroke mortality (0.70, 0.80 to 0.90). Increasing consumption to more than three cups a day was not associated with harm, but the beneficial effects were less pronounced, the researchers found.
Women seemed to benefit more from greater coffee consumption than men in terms of reduced risk of coronary heart disease and cardiovascular disease mortality, but less so in stroke mortality, the researchers found.
A meta-analysis of...