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25.04.2025

Coffee is healthy | But only at the beginning of the day

Coffee is healthy. If you drink a few cups of coffee every day, you may live longer. But you have to drink those cups of coffee at the beginning of the day, according to a recent American epidemiological study.

Study
Epidemiologists from Tulane University in the United States analyzed data from 40,725 adults who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 1999 and 2018. The researchers looked not only at coffee intake—the number of cups of coffee the study participants drank daily - but also at the time of day the participants consumed coffee.

Regarding the latter, the researchers distinguished two patterns. The most common pattern was the morning type. This meant that the participants mainly drank coffee before noon and sometimes until five in the afternoon, but not much after that.

The other type was the all day type. This meant that the study participants drank coffee throughout the day.

Results
In the ten years that the researchers followed the study participants, they counted 4295 deaths.

After the researchers had removed the effect of other factors to the best of their ability, coffee consumption of 2-3 cups per day appeared to reduce the chance of death by 16-21 percent among the morning types.

Among the all-day types, the researchers did see a trend that coffee consumption reduced the chance of death, but this trend was not statistically significant.

Mechanism
A possible explanation for the associations found is that drinking coffee in the afternoon and evening can reduce melatonin production by 30 percent. [Sleep Med. 2002 May;3(3):271-3.] Melatonin is not only a hormone that induces sleep, but also has a range of positive effects on health in itself.

Conclusion
"Our findings suggest that coffee drinking in the morning may be more strongly associated with lower mortality than coffee drinking later in the day", write the researchers.

"Our findings highlight the importance of considering drinking timing in the association between the amounts of coffee intake and health outcomes."

Source:
Eur Heart J. 2025 Feb 21;46(8):749-59.

More:
Coffee makes sedentary lifestyle less deadly 01.07.2024
How many cups of coffee a day should you drink if you want to live longer? 01.10.2022
Coffee - a superfood that reduces mortality 01.12.2018
Drink a couple of cups of coffee a day, and live longer 16.09.2016

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