Coffee is good for your heart, apparently. There’s a recent study saying that coffee consumption “may lower the risk of heart failure”, but it looks like it was only if you drank caffeinated coffee. However, and I’ll say it as early as now, it still will not replace eating a healthy diet and exercise. Also, always check with your doctor especially if your body tells you something every time you drink coffee and consume in moderation.

This is interesting. The study was conducted using machine learning analysis of data from three other studies. In two of three, the analysis showed that heart failure seemed to show a 5% to 12% lower risk of heart failure for subjects that drank at least one cup of coffee a day for about 10 years. On the other study, there was no significant change at one cup a day but a 30% decrease of risk at 2 cups a day. I mentioned decaf. One of the studies seemed to show that decaf increased the risk of heart failure.

The study is not without caveats (you can even say it is rife with them), and some other physicians have reservations about it. As with anything about the benefits of coffee, the study is only for black coffee consumption. There weren’t any mentions of whether or not this was specialty coffee or black instant coffee. The CNN piece talks about a key difference between brewing with a paper filter and without it and it looks like there was also no mention about any distinction in study. There was also no control as to the amount of coffee being consumed per day.

Are the findings definitive? I don’t think so. However, if you already drink coffee anyway then knowing that it can possibly help you lower the risk of heart failure does feel good. Knowing this might also help some coffee drinkers (black coffee) pursue a healthier lifestyle. Just remember that coffee, and more specifically caffeine, is a stimulant. I wrote a piece about what could be the ideal times within the day to drink coffee so maybe also check that.

Now like what I said at the beginning of this article, consume coffee in moderation and check with your doctor if it is safe for you to caffeinate. And since you’re reading this here, you already know I will champion that you drink good coffee so you won’t need to add sweeteners and fatty milk (or worse, non-dairy creamers). If you want to know more about the study, check out the links spread out in this post.

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