Study Finds Coffee Drinking Reduces Risk of Death In the past, some health professionals have warned against drinking large amounts of caffeinated coffee because it can cause irritability and insomnia. However, some studies have shown that drinking coffee is associated with a reduced risk of illness or death. With this in mind, researchers looked at data from around 500,000 British adults and found that drinking coffee generally reduces the risk of death. Drinking less than one cup of coffee a day was found to reduce the risk of death by 6 percent, while drinking six to seven cups reduced the risk of death by 16 percent. These potential benefits are the same whether people drink caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee. But for a good night’s sleep, you may want to stick to decaf at night. The study was led by a group of researchers at the National Cancer Institute in Maryland and the National Institutes of Health, and was funded by a number of organizations, including the Medical Research Council and the British Heart Foundation. The study was published in the peer-reviewed medical journal JAMAInternalMedicine. Risk of death reduction values Less than 1 cup per day – 6% 1 cup per day – 8% 2 to 3 cups per day – 12% 4 to 5 cups per day – 12% 6 to 7 cups per day – 16% 8 or more cups per day -14% The results were similar for instant, ground, and decaffeinated coffee and, again, were not related to genetic metabolism of caffeine. However, these results come from data from observational studies, so it is not possible to prove a direct causal relationship between coffee drinking and mortality. It is also not possible to completely rule out the influence of other dietary, health and lifestyle factors, and participant responses to coffee intake may be inaccurate due to participant self-reporting. A final point is that the participants were over the age of 40, and the results may have been different if a younger population had been studied. Overall, the researchers found that coffee consumption was clearly associated with a reduced risk of death to any degree. These interesting findings add to the evidence that drinking coffee is not bad for you and may even be beneficial.