Morning coffee may lower the risk of heart

Recent research has indicated that sipping coffee at various times of the day may lower the likelihood of dying early.

While the study did find that morning coffee drinkers had a decreased risk of mortality and cardiovascular disease fatalities compared to those who drank coffee throughout the day, it was difficult to tell whether coffee was the major reason.

Though the study doesn't define it, lead researcher and chairman of the Tulane University Obesity Research Center, Dr. Lu Qi, believes that sipping coffee later in the day would throw off a person's internal clock, which could explain why drinking it first thing in the morning lowers the risk.

On Wednesday, the European Heart Journal published the findings.

"We need clinical trials to test the potential impact of changing the time of day when people drink coffee." Dr. Qi stated, emphasizing that future research is important to explore whether the results are applicable to other groups.

"This study doesn't tell us why drinking coffee in the morning reduces the risk of death from cardiovascular disease," according to him.

One notion is that drinking coffee in the late afternoon or early evening might mess with your body's natural sleep cycles and hormone levels, including melatonin.

"This, in turn, leads to changes in cardiovascular risk factors such as inflammation and blood pressure."

Scientists from New Orleans' Tulane University evaluated data from 40,725 US people who filled out the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 1999 and 2018.

They were asked about their daily food and drink consumption and if they drank coffee, how much, and when.

"Given the effects that caffeine has on our bodies, we wanted to see if the time of day when you drink coffee has any impact on heart health," observed Dr. Qi.

While earlier research has proven moderate coffee drinking can have health advantages, this was the "first study testing coffee drinking timing patterns and health outcomes," he added.

The poll found that 14% of persons drank coffee throughout the day, and 36% drank it first thing in the morning.

Dr. Qi and his team tracked the individuals for almost a decade, looking at their information records and causes of death throughout that time period.

During the follow-up after almost 10 years, 4,295 individuals died, including 1,268 cardiovascular disease-associated fatalities.

The researchers discovered that morning coffee consumers were 16% less likely to have died compared to persons who did not drink coffee and 31% less likely to have died from heart disease.

They also discovered no reduction in risk for all-day coffee consumers compared to non-coffee drinkers.

"Drinking coffee in the morning may be more strongly associated with a lower risk of mortality than drinking coffee later in the day," they highlighted in the research report.

The researchers claimed increased coffee intake levels were "significantly" connected to a lower risk of death, but only among those who drank coffee in the morning compared with those who drank coffee all day.

In an accompanying editorial, Prof. Thomas F. Luscher from Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals in London asked, "Why would time of the day matter?

"In the morning hours there is commonly a marked increase in sympathetic activity [activity that puts your body systems on alert] as we wake up and get out of bed, an effect that fades away during the day and reaches its lowest level during sleep."

Prof. Luscher noted that, like the findings imply, it is "possible" that coffee intake later in the day could affect our body's internal clock during a time we should be resting.

"Indeed, many all-day drinkers suffer from sleep disturbances," he said, adding that "in this context, it is of interest that coffee seems to suppress melatonin, an important sleep-inducing mediator in the brain."

The study also found that among coffee drinkers, those who consumed it in the morning were more likely to take tea and caffeinated soda but consume less coffee—both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee—compared with those who drank coffee all day.