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Your favourite cup of coffee does you no harm, says the author. It may even do you some good.
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IF YOU'RE among the millions of people who drink coffee, you've likely seen news reports in recent years
implying the brew could damage health. But now the jury is pretty much in, and the news is looking good.
Here are the latest findings on what coffee does to the body and mind.
Is It Heart-Healthy?
The idea that coffee is bad for your heart pops up periodically. Over the last 20 years several studies --
mainly from Europe -- found that drinking very strong coffee regularly could sharply increase cholesterol
levels. Researchers even isolated fatlike chemicals, cafestol and kahweol, responsible for the rise.
It turned out that the European brewing method -- boiling water sits on the coffee grounds for several
minutes before straining -- produces high concentrations of cafestol and kahweol. By contrast, the filter
and percolation methods used by the majority of coffee lovers elsewhere remove all but a trace of these
chemicals. Moreover, the studies involved large amounts of coffee -- five to six cups a day. Average
coffee drinkers down only two cups.
Research has also shown that regular, moderate coffee drinking does not raise blood pressure
dangerously. And studies have failed to substantiate fears that coffee might trigger abnormal heart
rhythms (arrhythmias) in healthy people.
"For heart disease, I think the issue is closed," says Meir Stampfer, an epidemiologist at Harvard who has
studied many aspects of coffee and health. "Coffee drinking at reasonable levels is unrelated to heart
risk."
Parkinson's Protection
Evidence suggests that coffee may help fend off Parkinson's disease. A 30-year study of 8000
Japanese-American men found that avid coffee drinkers had one-fifth the risk of those who didn't drink
the brew.
Scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital found indirect evidence that caffeine -- the habit-forming
stimulant in coffee -- may actually combat Parkinson's. The caffeine seemed to protect mice brain cells
from depletion of the nerve chemical dopamine the problem underlying Parkinson's in humans. However,
these are preliminary findings; human studies have not consistently supported caffeine's protective role.
Cancer Links?
The studies on coffee and cancer have focused on three organs -- and are reassuring. You may
remember a brief coffee scare in the early 1980s when a single study linked coffee with pancreatic cancer.
A false alarm: many studies since then have shown that the association is either extremely weak or
nonexistent. If there's a connection between coffee and bladder cancer, it likely applies only to coffee
junkies. A re-analysis of ten European studies found an increased risk only among people who drank ten
or more cups a day.
And studies show that coffee seems to have no adverse influence on the risk of colon cancer.
Miscarriage Concerns
A Canadian analysis of five studies on coffee and miscarriage concluded that pregnant women who drank
the caffeine equivalent of two cups of coffee a day had 36 percent more miscarriages than women who
drank less than that.
"You're never sure," says epidemiologist Mark Klebanoff at the US National Institute of Child Health and
Human Development, "whether drinking coffee increases the risk of a miscarriage or whether many
women who have a normal, healthy pregnancy just lose their taste for coffee."
Klebanoff oversaw a study that measured a metabolic product of caffeine in the women's blood -- a more
accurate gauge of coffee consumption. In this study, only those who drank the equivalent of more than
five to six cups of coffee a day had an increased likelihood of miscarriage.
Here's the Buzz . . .
Caffeine is such a powerful stimulant that the International Olympic Committee and the US National
Collegiate Athletic Association set limits on how much can remain in the blood during competition. In
addition to boosting physical endurance, caffeine increases alertness and improves mood. The buzz may
come at a price, though. People who drink more than they're used to may become restless and unable
to sleep. Moreover, it's possible to become physically dependent on caffeine in days.
Should You Drink Up?
Women who are pregnant, likely to become pregnant or breast-feeding should drink no more than two
cups of coffee a day to avoid the risk of miscarriage or a jittery breast-fed baby.
Those with heartburn, anxiety and fibrocystic breast lumps may want to see if cutting back on coffee
improves their condition. For most people, however, there's virtually no risk in consuming up to three
normal cups a day.
Stampfer tries to keep his coffee drinking irregular enough to avoid it becoming a habit: "That way, I can
get a buzz when I feel like it."
Reader's Digest, September 2002
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