The aroma....the taste....the caffeine lift! No wonder millions of people, both young and old, around the world love nothing better than sitting down to a good cup of coffee. But as with many other things we enjoy in our everyday life, we often question whether it is good for us. Over the years there have been thousands of studies done on the health effects of coffee, yielding no clear consensus. However, the latest and one of the largest studies ever conducted suggests that drinking coffee in moderate amounts, up to six cups a day, may actually reduce the risks of death in general, and may help to combat heart disease, especially in women.

In the study, researchers led by Dr. Esther Lopez-Garcia, assistant professor of preventative medicine at the Autonoma University in Madrid, Spain, tracked 86,214 female nurses, who had participated in the Nurse's Health Study, from 1980 to 2004 and 41,736 male veterinarians, pharmacists and other health care workers, who had participated in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, from 1986 to 2004. At the onset of the study, all volunteers were free of heart disease and cancer.

The participants answered detailed questionnaires every two to four years, which included information about their coffee consumption and other dietary habits, weight, exercise habits, smoking history and health conditions. The researchers then compared the frequency of death from any cause, death due to heart disease, and death due to cancer among people with different coffee-drinking habits. After accounting for other risk factors, such as smoking, diet and body size, the researchers found that women who drank two to three cups of caffeinated coffee daily had a 25 percent lower risk of death from heart disease and an 18 percent lower death risk from a cause other than cancer or heart disease, compared to non-coffee drinkers. For men, the study did not find an increase or decrease in death risk. Dr. Lopez-Garcia surmised it could be that there were fewer men involved in the study and they were tracked for a shorter period of time.

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