My favorite kind of research is the kind that validates my poor lifestyle choices, so today is like Christmas: A new study in the medical journal Circulation is making the claim that coffee guzzlers outlive their self-righteous abstaining friends. Researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that people who drink coffee regularly benefit from a lower risk of life-shortening diseases.
“Bioactive compounds in coffee reduce insulin resistance and systematic inflammation,” said one of the study authors, Ming Ding, in a press release. “That could explain some of our findings. However, more studies are needed to investigate the biological mechanisms producing these effects.”
If you, like me, are microwaving your third cup of coffee and wondering exactly how much coffee is good coffee for you, you’re in luck. According to these researchers, you can drink three to five cups of coffee a day and still experience the wondrous benefits of being a caffeine addict. You are less likely to die from heart disease! Type 2 diabetes! Neurological diseases like Parkinson’s! And even suicide! (Coffee will not, however, save you from your inevitable death, for death comes for us all.)
Our benevolent researchers apparently culled data from three separate studies, analyzing questionnaires from more than 200,000 respondents over a four-year period (it should be noted that, oddly, Caucasians comprise 95 percent of the research subjects).
“This study provides further evidence that moderate consumption of coffee may confer health benefits in terms of reducing premature death due to several diseases,” said author Frank Hu, in the press release. “These data support the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Report that concluded that ‘moderate coffee consumption can be incorporated into a healthy dietary pattern.’”
