Research has proven time and time again that your morning cup of joe doesn’t just give you the jolt you need to wake up and stay alert.
It can also be good for your health.
In fact, coffee has been found to offer more digestive perks than you can shake a stick at and protect against liver disease and cirrhosis.
It’s even been shown that coffee goes to bat for your brain, protecting you against major neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, and slashes your stroke risk.
Yet, too much of even a good thing can be bad for your body.
The question is, “How much is too much when it comes to coffee?”
The magic number that guards your heart
While coffee has even shown benefits for heart health, such as a reduced risk of heart failure, research from the University of South Australia has now proven that there is a point where consuming too much can be harmful.
And it has become the very first study to set a hard and fast limit on safe coffee consumption based on its effects on heart health.
To find that limit, the research delved into mounds of data from over 347,000 adults, aged 37 to 73, in the UK, comparing their coffee habits to diagnoses of heart disease.
And what it came down to was this…
Coffee is a healthy choice as long as you don’t keep drinking cup after cup.
“In order to maintain a healthy heart and a healthy blood pressure, people must limit their coffees to fewer than six cups a day – based on our data six was the tipping point where caffeine started to negatively affect cardiovascular risk,” said study co-author Elina Hyppönen, a professor at the Australian Centre for Precision Health.
Yup, five cups or less lets you grab coffee’s many health benefits, but beyond that, you’re risking your heart.
“Knowing the limits of what’s good for you and what’s not is imperative. As with many things, it’s all about moderation; overindulge and your health will pay for it,” concludes Hyppönen.
Heart-healthy caffeine consumption tips
Beyond keeping your number of cups under six per day, it’s also important to remember to pay attention to how the caffeine in coffee makes you feel.
If you start to get that jittery, heart-pumping feeling or become irritable, listen to your body.
Caffeine helps your body work faster and harder, but those signs suggest that you may have reached your limit for the time being.
And there’s one more thing you should know…
Research has shown that there’s another factor (beyond the number of cups you drink) that determines whether or not your coffee is heart-healthy.
And that’s whether or not your coffee is filtered.
This means that you’ll need to skip making your coffee using a French press and give up pour-over style coffee and instead stick with coffee made with a high-quality coffee maker and all-natural, unbleached filters.
Sources:
Long-term coffee consumption, caffeine metabolism genetics, and risk of cardiovascular disease: a prospective analysis of up to 347,077 individuals and 8368 cases – The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition