Want to Live Longer? Drink Coffee

It seems like there’s a new study about the health effects of coffee every week. Sometimes, the stuff is going to kill you; other times, it’s the greatest thing on earth. With all of these humorously varied results, it’s hard to know just who to believe.

Enter the most recent study. No, don’t roll your eyes just yet — this one is the biggest of its kind and provides perhaps the most comprehensive look yet at how your morning cup of joe impacts your long-term health. And, luckily for us, the results point in a positive direction!

For 13 years, the AARP in conjunction with the National Institutes of Health followed the lives of over 400,000 healthy adults aged 50-71. During the course of the study, about 13 percent of the participants died. Coffee drinkers were less likely to be among that 13 percent of participants, with a direct link between the cups of coffee consumed in a day and a lower mortality risk. When broken down by the way participants had died, the pattern held true for all ailments with the exception of cancer.

Researchers aren’t going so far as to say that coffee consumption lowers a person’s risk of developing a chronic disease, however, because the study’s methodology did not give a fully comprehensive portrait of participant’s health history. It also didn’t fully get behind coffee as a health food. Preliminary data, though, points to the roughly 1,000 compounds contained in the average cup of coffee as improving health.