Coffee. It’s almost too good to be true, isn’t it? “Nectar of the gods,” I believe is what some guy called it once.
So good is coffee, in fact, that the people who drink coffee—we’ll call them “demi-gods”—can occasionally experience moments of nagging doubt as they sip the caffeinated elixir of life.
It’s okay—even the most faithful coffee lover can experience these moments of doubt.
These people worry that coffee is too good to be true—that there must be some major downside to all of the good it brings into the world.
“What’s the catch?” they’re heard to ask, as they stare down at their first cup of the day.
Specifically, some people in the Western world have worried that indulging in a lot of coffee—well, just the caffeine, really—must be hurting their health. And studies in the past have made that suggestion, warning people to lower their coffee consumption as if it will stiffen arteries, increasing the risk for a heart attack or a stroke.
However, a study from Queen Mary University of London, a public research university in… (drum roll) London, shows that people who drink as many as 25 cups of coffee a day don’t appear to have stiffer arteries than people who drink less than one cup a day.
And yes, there was more than one participant who drank 25 cups a day.
While the study didn’t include anyone who drank over 25 cups a day—they were probably too busy making money moves, getting shit done, writing rhymes and writing checks—the average coffee intake in the highest coffee consumption category was only 5 cups a day.
The research debunks the myth that “drinking coffee leads to stiffer arteries.” Well, not just debunks—more like “blows the myth out of the water.”
Or how about: “totally annihilates the myth.” Yeah, I like that one.
The QMUL study, funded by the British Heart Foundation, included 8,412 people in the UK, who underwent infrared pulse wave tests and MRI heart scans.
Dr. Kenneth Fung of Queen Mary University said “Despite the huge popularity of coffee worldwide, different reports could put people off from enjoying it.”
“Whilst we can’t prove a causal link in this study, our research indicates that coffee isn’t as bad for the arteries as previous studies would suggest.
You know when someone uses the word “whilst,” they’re very serious. Or very from England.
Dr. Fung told CNN: “The main message for people to take away from this is that coffee can be enjoyed as part of a healthy lifestyle, and coffee lovers can be reassured by this result in terms of blood vessel stiffness outcomes.”
While this research obviously stops way short of saying “every person on earth should start drinking 25 cups of coffee a day,” it does disprove this major misconception about coffee and cardiovascular health.
Professor Metin Avkiran, Associate Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation, said: “There are several conflicting studies saying different things about coffee, and it can be difficult to filter what we should believe and what we shouldn’t. This research will hopefully put some of the media reports in perspective, as it rules out one of the potential detrimental effects of coffee on our arteries.”
