Is it because coffee is so good that we assume it is going to kill us? It's not, at least according to two new studies published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. In fact, it might actually make us live longer.
The first study from the World Health Organization and the Imperial College London, which author Neil Murphy told Stat was the largest coffee and mortality study to date, found that those in the upper 25 percent for coffee consumption had a lower risk of death compared to non-coffee drinkers. Specifically, coffee drinkers had a lower risk of dying early from digestive and circulatory system diseases, and lung cancer in men. (The study followed 521,000 Europeans over 16 years.)
The second study from the University of Southern California found that drinking one to six cups each day also decreased the risk of dying early, and said coffee drinkers with cancer, heart disease, chronic lower respiratory disease, and kidney disease might have a lower risk of early death than non-coffee drinkers. (The study followed 180,000 non-white people over 16 years.)
One to six cups is quite a range; Murphy said three cups of coffee was "not harmful to your health," based on his study. If you want to live life on the edge, an earlier study found caffeine to be safe up to 400 milligrams, or about four cups, a day. And don't take this as a prescription for extreme coffee consumption—neither study could definitively link coffee to longer life expectancy. But it probably won't kill you, and that's good enough news for right now.
