A study, published in the Nature Medicine journal, has found that drinking coffee could save your life by eliminating the chemicals in the blood that trigger heart disease.
Previous studies had scientists puzzled as to why coffee has this effect on the body but researchers from Stanford University have just discovered why it’s so incredible for your health!
Why could coffee save your life?
Inflammation in the body is associated with the development of more than 60% of all types of disease, including heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease.
Coffee has been found to block the chemicals in the blood that cause inflammation, which significantly reduces the risk of developing heart disease because it prevents arteries from hardening.
Professor David Furman of Stanford University’s Institute for Immunity, Transplantation, and Infection, said: “More than 90% of all non-communicable diseases of aging are associated with chronic inflammation. It’s also well known that caffeine intake is associated with longevity. We’ve found a possible reason for why this may be so.”
How does coffee do it?
The caffeine in coffee has been strongly associated with reducing inflammation and researchers confirmed that regular coffee drinkers had a significantly lower risk of developing a disease than those who did not drink any coffee.
Dr. Mark Davis, an associate of Professor Furman, said: “Our findings show that an underlying inflammatory process, which is associated with aging, is not only driving cardiovascular disease but is, in turn, driven by molecular events that we may be able to target and combat.”
In an ongoing study, researchers found that caffeine drinkers aged 20-30 and those aged 60 and up experienced the same benefits, with lowered inflammation in the body and therefore a much lower risk of developing a disease.
Does any caffeine have the same effect?
Laboratory tests on human cell cultures found that caffeine was the substance that combatted the chemicals which trigger inflammation and that coffee, in general, offered the highest amount of it. While tea and fizzy drinks also contain caffeine, the most regular consumers of caffeine and those who had the lowest levels of inflammation were coffee drinkers.
“That something that many people drink and actually like to drink might have a direct benefit came as a surprise to use. What we’ve shown is a correlation between caffeine consumption and longevity. And we’ve shown more rigorously, in laboratory tests, a very plausible mechanism for why this might be so,” said Dr. Davis.
Sources:
http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/what-is-it-about-coffee
http://www.alzheimers.net/2014-04-09/benefits-of-coffee/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16685044
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/80/4/862.full
