Good news (or, perhaps I should say, good “brews”): Coffee consumption can come with benefits, particularly for aging women.
A new study announced just last week, at this year’s meeting of the American Society for Nutrition, found that women who imbibed moderate amounts of coffee were found to have fewer physical and mental health problems as they got older.
“That’s not to say coffee is a cure-all – but for those who already drink and tolerate it well, it appears to be a positive part of a healthy lifestyle,” Sara Mahdavi, the University of Toronto professor who led the research effort, said to Time magazine in a statement.
For the study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed or published, Mahdavi and her team kept tabs on over 47,000 middle-aged women nurses, all of them under the age of 60 at the start of the project, over the course of three decades – starting in 1986. As they got older, researchers chronicled who among the participant pool was afflicted with heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, cancer and other chronic ailments.
About 3,700 of the women involved in the study reached and surpassed the age of 70 without grappling with any of those issues – and coffee consumption was a common trait among them.
Naturally occurring ingredients such as chlorogenic acids, as well as micronutrients found therein, can help with reducing inflammation, improving blood vessel function and aiding in glucose metabolism, Mahdavi noted to Time.
This does not mean that one can drink a cup in lieu of working out or maintaining a healthy diet, however, researchers point out – nor does it mean that any old caffeine-loaded beverage will stave off diseases. (Sorry, Diet Coke lovers.)
“Cola … contains other ingredients that may work against healthy aging,” She explains as one example. Mahdavi then added: “Our findings suggest that the observed benefits are specific to caffeinated coffee, not caffeine itself.”
