The benefits of a good cup of coffee are well-known. Now a study reveals that a cup of coffee a day can actually lower the risk of an early death. According to the study, people who drink coffee in the morning had a lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease and had a lower mortality risk than all-day coffee consumers.
However, the researchers couldn’t prove whether coffee was the sole cause. According to a report by BBC, Dr Lu Qi, lead researcher and director of Tulane University Obesity Research Center, said while the study does not show why drinking coffee in the morning reduces the risk, one reason could be that consumption later in the day may disrupt a person’s internal body clock.
The findings of the study were published in the European Heart Journal.
According to Dr. Qi, more studies are needed to see if their findings could also be observed in other populations, adding: “We need clinical trials to test the potential impact of changing the time of day when people drink coffee.”
During the study, the researchers from Tulane University in New Orleans, looked at 40,725 adults who had taken part in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in the US between 1999 and 2018. The participants were asked about their daily food and drink consumption, and whether they drank coffee, how much and when. The study has revealed that moderate coffee drinking can have health benefits, this was the “first study testing coffee drinking timing patterns and health outcomes”.
According to the researchers, morning coffee drinkers were 16 percent less likely to have died compared to those who did not drink coffee, and 31 percent less likely to have died from heart disease. “Drinking coffee in the morning may be more strongly associated with a lower risk of mortality than drinking coffee later in the day,” they wrote in the research paper.