Drinking coffee (even with sugar) can extend your lifespan

“Research shows that coffee can protect the heart and help treat other illnesses,” Liu told Healthline.

However, previous studies surrounding the health benefits of drinking coffee have not investigated whether the use of certain sweeteners in coffee affects health outcomes.

Liu said her team’s goal is to see how this affects their findings.

The study It was set up as a prospective cohort study. That is, place people in groups that are similar to each other in all respects, except how to drink coffee. Then they followed them over time to see how they went.

They got the data from UK Biobank.. This database contains about 500,000 people who volunteered to make medical and genetic information available to researchers.

Overall, 171,616 people who did not have cardiovascular disease or cancer at the start of the study were included. The average age of study participants was 55.6 years. These people were followed starting in 2009 and ending in 2018.

During the study, people reported coffee consumption and whether they used sugar, artificial sweeteners, or any sweeteners at all.

“Adults who drank sugar-sweetened coffee added only a teaspoon of sugar on average,” Liu said.

The research team estimated death from all causes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease.

After analyzing the data collected, researchers found a U-shaped association between the amount of coffee they drank and the risk of death.

People with moderate consumption levels worked better than those with less or more.

However, the authors of the study noted that the data are about 10 years old. Also, tea is from a very popular country and can affect the results.

They further pointed out that people in the study used much less sugar than those found in drinks at many chain coffee shops. This makes it difficult to compare survey participants with people who drink coffee from stores like Starbucks.

Mary Mosquera CochraneA registered dietitian at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, she said that moderate coffee consumption, which she defined as 2-5 cups per day, was previously associated with many positive health effects.

These include a reduced risk of stroke, type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, colon cancer, liver cancer, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. researchDrinking coffee may also reduce the risk of acute kidney injury.

According to Cochrane, coffee consumption seems to be associated with longer lifespan, based on research by Liu’s team and other research. She cannot say that one causes the other, but she said the study supports that view.

Cochrane also noted that consuming moderate amounts of sugar with coffee (1.5 to 3.5 teaspoons per day) does not diminish the health benefits. She also found it interesting that the results of artificial sweeteners were not definitive.

“As with all observational studies, it can be difficult to actually distinguish the effects of other factors that may affect health from the fact that we did not observe changes in coffee intake over time. It can also affect the results. “

When asked about specific recommendations for drinking coffee, Cochrane said, “Unless there are negative side effects, moderate coffee consumption is a great way to protect against many chronic illnesses and prolong life. Maybe. “

She may want to drink decaffeinated coffee because the antioxidants it contains are believed to bring many of the health benefits, even if the coffee feels too pungent. Suggests.

“Remember again,” said Cochrane. “Participants in this study of adding sugar to coffee did not add more than one teaspoon to each cup. Therefore, use a simple coffee beverage that controls the amount of sugar added and avoids artificial sweeteners. Is recommended. “

Liu’s conclusion was similar to Cochrane’s.

“Based on our findings, we can tell people that most coffee drinkers don’t need to exclude drinks from their diet, but they need to be careful with high-calorie specialty coffee,” she says. I did.