🔒 It is ok for your heart to drink up to 25 cups of coffee a day!

As someone who is quite happy living without many of the vices in life, coffee is not one of them. Ok and chocolates. Like most of us, coffee is my pick-me-up when I wake up, go-to when I need a boost while working and a pleasant accompaniment to any conversation. When people tell me, it is also a drug, I counter that it is a drug that I am not addicted to, because I can easily drop it with little side-effects and I often do; you can’t say the same about alcohol, cigarettes or other drugs. Coffee consumption in South Africa stood at 809,000 60kg bags in 2017/18 according to Insight Survey’s 2019 Coffee Landscape Report and our consumption keeps on growing every year. New research by the British Heart Foundation and Queen Mary University of London has found that as much as 25 cups a day could be fine for your heart. – Linda van Tilburg

By Thulasizwe Sithole

While tea still rules as the world’s favourite drink, coffee comes second and while it is often portrayed as a drink that may be bad for you, research led by the William Harvey Research Institute and part-funded by the British Heart Foundation which was presented at a conference in Manchester in early June 2019, debunked previous studies that claimed coffee could increase arterial stiffness. The University studied the effect of coffee om 8000 people and concluded that most moderate to heavy coffee drinkers were likely to be male, smoked and consumed alcohol regularly.

The participants were divided into three groups: those who drank less than a cup a day, those that drank between one and three cups a day and those who drank more than three cups a day and they were given MRI heart scans and infrared pulse wave tests. People who consumed more than 25 cups a day; (goodness who would have thought there are people who do that, were excluded). The researchers found that there was no increase in stiffening of arteries of people who drank up to 25 cups of coffee a day “when compared with those who drank less than one cup a day.“

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The data analyst for the research, Dr Kenneth Fung said: “Despite the huge popularity of coffee worldwide, different reports could put people off from enjoying it. Whilst we can’t prove a causal link in this study, our research indicates coffee isn’t as bad for the arteries as previous studies would suggest.” There were some people in the study who drank as many as 25 cups of coffee a day, but the average was closer to 5 cups a day and the researchers are planning to study this group more closely in order to advise on a safe limit for coffee drinking.

Read also: Drinking coffee could prevent colon cancer return, say scientists

An Associate Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation said: “There are several conflicting studies saying different things about coffee and it can be difficult to filter what we should believe and what we shouldn’t… This research rules out one of the potential detrimental effects of coffee on our arteries.”

The Financial Times regard this study as good news, “but not very new news.” It says that coffee has in fact turned out not to “cause cancer, incontinence, brittle bones, dehydration, gallstones, liver damage, dementia or… stomach ulcers.” The FT goes on to list a number of health benefits of drinking coffee saying it has found to protect against type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s and liver disease and it helps with the improvement of some functions of the brain including depression and Alzheimer’s disease. And the FT says the best effect of coffee is that it keeps you alert, “blocking the effects of adenosine, a brain chemical that makes you feel tired.”

The FT dismissed some of the side effects of coffee such as raised heart beat and increased anxiety saying the effects are temporary and “disappear as the caffeine is flushed out of the system.” But says coffee drinkers have to keep in mind that the sugar that some people like to add, is probably more dangerous than the coffee itself.

According to the FT, who are clearly fans of the caffeinated drink, coffee has “social benefit as well.” And the writer of the article… points to the Scandinavians who are often found to be the happiest people in the world due to “so many indices for health, social welfare and democracy”, who also top of world tables of coffee consumption per capita.