Study shows coffee reduces heart disease risk

Researchers have said coffee drinkers have less chance of contracting heart disease
than non-drinkers. Image: Love coffee. Credit: Ahmed Rabea/flickr

(thetechherald) -- European researchers have shown coffee drinkers to be less at risk of heart disease than people who do not drink the beverage.

A study of 129,000 men and women over two decades showed regular coffee drinkers were less at risk of heart attacks, stroke, and arrhythmia. Women who drank four to five cups per day 34% less likely to die of heart disease, while men who drank the same amount 44% less likely to die from the same cause.

Experts believe that coffee may combat the illness by reducing damage caused at the early stage of heart disease.

"It looks like coffee has some effect that hasn't been established before. The general idea is that coffee is not so bad," says study leader Esther Lopez-Garcia, an epidemiologist at the Autonomous University of Madrid to the New Scientist.

However researchers stopped short of recommending coffee as a health drink saying more research needed to be done on the subject before such a claim could be made.

Some other studies though have found coffee drinkers to have less likelihood in contracting liver cancer and diabetes.