Do Coffee Drinkers Live Longer?

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How many cups of coffee do you drink a day? Are you worried it’s too much?

A new study has shown drinking coffee might not be as bad for you as first thought.

According to the study of almost half a million people from 10 different European countries, drinking three cups of coffee a day may help you live longer.

Yes you read that correctly drinking 3 cups of coffee a day may help you live longer.

The study was carried out by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and Imperial College London.

The researchers found that women had a 7% reduced risk on a whole.

They also found men who drank the largest amounts of coffee had a 12% overall reduced risk of death.

However good this sounds the findings need to be taken with a pinch of salt or sugar, depending on how you take your coffee.

So if this is correct, how much could a cup of coffee lengthen your life?

Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, from the University of Cambridge, worked out that if it was the effect of a cup of coffee then an extra cup every day would extend the life expectancy of a woman by around a month and the life of a man by around three months.

Although this is a huge study involving loads of people, it’s not perfect and doesn’t prove that coffee beans are secret ingredient to a longer life.

Don’t go rushing off to buy coffee just yet

Annoyingly for coffee lovers, the findings really are not as concrete as they may seem.

This is because the researchers could not control all the factors of the experiment and things like people’s lifestyle and diets may have an effect on the final results.

One of the things it did not look at was how much the coffee drinkers earned in comparison with non-coffee drinkers.

It could be that people who can afford three cups of coffee a day are wealthier and that extra money could mean they have a better standard of living.

Will we ever know if coffee truly makes you live longer?

Probably not, although there is a lot to say the study above has some findings that look promising, no aspect of the experiment was done in a controlled way.

The only way to truly find out if coffee can have an effect on how long you live is if they could monitor all aspects of the experiment on participants who are pretty much exactly the same. A study like this is very unlikely to ever take place. 

As for now, instead of relying on coffee being good for you, do something that has been proven to help extend life expectancy and take a 20 minute walk, it could be to a coffee shop, whether you order a cup or not is up to you.

Current guidelines advise drinking no more than around four cups of coffee a-day.

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