I did not know that coffee drinking can have some benefits. I drink two cups a day one in the morning and one in the evening. I was pleased to read that researchers from the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Research Unit at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Department of Epidemiology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, showed that by drinking coffee regularly and in moderation, you could reduce your risk of heart failure; the new study was published in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation: Heart Failure.
They did not do any study themselves; but searched electronic databases (MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Cinahl) from January 1966 through December 2011 with the use of a standardized protocol to analyze previous studies on the link between coffee consumption and heart failure.
Why did they do this research? They learnt that the studies so far to find linkage between coffee consumption and heart failure gave conflicting results.
They used "coffee" and "heart failure" as the key words and reviewed the reference lists of retrieved articles. They analyzed all articles with an abstract suggesting that it was relevant.
The search identified 116 publications. They excluded 27 duplicates. An additional 84 articles were excluded after review of the title or abstract. Finally, the meta-analysis included five independent prospective studies of coffee consumption and heart failure risk. Combined, these studies included 6,522heart failure events among 140,220 participants. Four of the studies were done in Sweden and one in Finland. Three studies consisted of participants with no history of myocardial infarction (MI); one consisted of participants with a history of MI, and one included separate analyses for people with and without a history of diabetes or MI.Two
studies included men one included women and two included both men and women.
The researchers found that moderate coffee drinking as part of a daily routine may be linked with a significantly lower risk of heart failure. In contrast, excessive drinking may be linked with an increased chance of developing serious heart problems.
"While there is a commonly held belief that regular coffee consumption may be dangerous to heart health, our research suggests that the opposite may be true," said Dr Murray Mittleman, senior study author.
"We found that moderate consumption — which we define as the equivalent of about two typical American coffee shop beverages — may actually protect against heart failure by as much as 11 percent," he said. "On the other hand, excessive coffee drinking — five to six commercial coffee house cups per day has no benefit and may even be dangerous. As with so many things, moderation appears to be the key here, too."
The study defines moderate consumption as four Northern European servings per day, the equivalent to about two typical 8-ounce American servings. Excessive coffee consumption is 10 Northern European servings per day, the equivalent to four or five coffees from popular American coffee restaurant chains (servings sizes vary from 9 to 20 fluid ounces per serving).
Researchers didn't account for brew strength. Coffee is typically weaker in the United States than it is in Europe. Also they also didn't differentiate between caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee, but most of the coffee consumed in Sweden and Finland is caffeinated.
"There are many factors that play into a person's risk of heart failure, but moderate coffee consumption doesn't appear to be one of them," said Elizabeth Mostofsky, lead study author and research fellow at Beth Israel.
This is good news for coffee drinkers. Ms Mostofsky boldly proposed that their study warrants changes to the current heart failure prevention guidelines, which suggest that coffee drinking may be risky for heart patients.The American Heart Association recommends that heart failure patients consume only a moderate amount of caffeine — no more than a cup or two of coffee or other caffeinated beverage a day.
Researchers didn't definitively say why coffee offers a heart-health benefit. But evidence suggests that frequent coffee drinkers develop a tolerance to the beverage's caffeine, which may put them at a decreased risk of developing high blood pressure.
Habitual coffee consumption is also associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, with most studies showing the greatest reduction in risk with higher levels of coffee consumption.
"Diabetes and hypertension are among the most important risk factors for heart failure, so it stands to reason that reducing one's odds of developing either of them, in turn, reduces one's chance of heart failure," Mittleman said.
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