Drinking coffee may keep us up at night, but new research has given us a reason to sleep peacefully, knowing that the popular drink isn't as bad for our arteries as some previous research suggests. The research has shown that drinking coffee, even in people who drink up to 25 cups a day, is not associated with stiffening arteries. Arteries carry blood that carries oxygen and nutrients from your heart to the rest of your body. If they become stiff, it can increase the workload on the heart and increase the risk of a heart attack or stroke.
The study of more than 8,000 people in the UK disproves previous studies claiming that drinking coffee increases arterial stiffness. Previous suggestions that coffee drinking leads to stiffer arteries have been inconsistent and may be limited by lower participant numbers, say the team behind this new study.
Coffee consumption was divided into three groups for the study. Those who drink less than one cup a day, those who drink between one and three cups a day, and those who drink more than three cups. People who consumed more than 25 cups of coffee a day were excluded, but no increased stiffening of the arteries was associated with those drinking up to this high limit compared to those drinking less than one cup a day.
The associations between coffee drinking and artery stiffness were adjusted for contributing factors such as age, gender, ethnicity, smoking status, height, weight, how much alcohol someone drank, what they ate, and high blood pressure.
Of the 8,412 participants who had MRI heart scans and infrared pulse wave tests, the study showed that moderate and heavy coffee drinkers are most likely to be male, smoke and regularly consume alcohol.
The researcher from Queen Mary University in London said:“Despite the huge popularity of coffee worldwide, several reports could put people off enjoying it. While we cannot establish a causal relationship in this study, our research indicates that coffee is not as bad for the arteries as previous studies suggest.
