Substances contained in coffee, prolongs life
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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According to statistics, coffee lovers suffer less from cardiovascular and infectious diseases than those who do not drink coffee.
Coffee not only prevents the development of neurological disorders: according to scientists from the National Cancer Institute (USA), it protects us from cardiovascular diseases, strokes, heart attacks and even some infections. And in general prolongs life. Oh, to engage in this kind of research is a thankless task: where is the guarantee that a man who lived a hundred years owes his life to coffee, not to two or three years, when he had to give up caffeine for some reason? .
But this time the researchers called on to help the truly gigantic statistics: the data of more than 400 thousand people, who were questioned by the doctors for coffee consumption in the mid-1990s. From this gigantic sample, researchers excluded those who had cancer, heart problems, or other serious diseases, and then traced the mortality statistics among the remaining healthy people until 2008. It turned out that those who drank two or more cups of coffee a day died 10-16% less often. One cup of coffee, according to this statistics, was already much inferior to two. And in women, the benefits of coffee manifested more than men: women who persuaded for six cups a day died 15% less often, men only 10% (compared to those who do not drink coffee).
As the researchers write in the New England Journal of Medicine, more than two day cups of coffee have a beneficial effect on the cardiovascular system, reduce the risk of respiratory and diabetes diseases. More than four cups reduce the likelihood of acute heart attacks and infectious diseases. It should be noted that the researchers took into account such factors as body weight, smoking, alcohol addiction, eating red or white meat, a tendency to fruits and vegetables. Even with the fact that all this also affects life expectancy, the effect of coffee remained very noticeable.
And, finally, the most important result of the work: as in the case of neurological diseases, the beneficial effect of decaffeinated coffee was exactly the same as that of ordinary coffee. That is, it's not in caffeine, but in some other biologically active substances present in coffee beans. It would, of course, be very interesting to know what these substances are, but here the researchers foresee great difficulties. Coffee, apparently, prolongs life not because it blocks the path of a single disease. That is, its action occurs immediately in several directions - which means that it will be very difficult to decipher such a complex mechanism.
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