Drinking two cups of plain, caffeinated coffee a day can lower the risk of heart failure by 30 percent, according to a new research report by the American Heart Association (AHA).
The report, which drew data from three major studies, said that coffee drinkers showed a decreased rates of heart failure — a condition where the heart muscle does not pump enough blood to keep the body functioning properly — by 5 percent to 12 percent for each cup they drank on a daily basis.
“The association between caffeine and heart failure risk reduction was surprising,” said Dr. David Kao, an assistant professor of cardiology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, in a statement. “Coffee and caffeine are often considered by the general population to be bad for the heart because people associate them with palpitations, high blood pressure.”
Instead, the study showed that decaf coffee drinkers did not share this benefit of risk reduction, but rather could be linked to a higher risk of cardiac problems.
The report included data the Framingham Heart Study, which has been running for 72 years, spanning three decades of participants in Massachusetts; the multisite, biracial Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study that began in 1987; and the 10-year-long Cardiovascular Health Study among older adults, spanning decades and suggesting that drinking plain coffee reduces the risk of heart failure.
African Americans are 30 percent more likely to suffer from a heart disease than whites in the U.S. and 40 percent more likely to have high blood pressure, according to data from the Office of Minority Health.
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The risk of high blood pressure among Black American women is even worse, with a 60 percent higher chance than white women.
Scientists attribute the disparity to biological and environmental factors, such as the stress of dealing with racial discrimination.
