New Study Finds Drinking Coffee Might Help You Live Longer

If you drink coffee on the reg to the point of feeling like a low key drug addict, rejoice: A new study finds your nasty habit might help you live longer. "In our study, we found people who drank three to five cups of coffee per day had about a 15 percent lower [risk of premature] mortality compared to people who didn't drink coffee," says one of the study authors, nutrition researcher Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health. Cheers.


Decaf drinkers also saw benefits, which I find hard to believe, since decaf coffee is dumb baby juice. The findings, published in the journalCirculation and written up by NPR, build on a body of evidence that links coffee drinking with health benefits, like previous research that had coffee drinking linked with a decreased risk of stroke. There was also evidence that a coffee habit cuts the risk of Type 2 diabetes, too.

Research has shown, however, that consuming more than 400 milligrams of caffeine can interfere with sleep and create anxiety. Well, duh. "Not everyone reacts to coffee in the same way," says Andrew Maynard, who studies risk assessment at Arizona State University. He said the benefits documented in this study are actually "small."

"There are a lot of unknowns as to what [may explain] the increase in life expectancy," Maynard said. So, I guess, I don't know. Keep doing what you're doing. Don't drink so much coffee that you want to run a mile and jump off a bridge. That's probably the sweet spot.