While nutritionists used to believe that coffee drinkers were more prone to heart attacks, growing evidence shows this habit can actually have a beneficial effect on your heart.
According to a recent article, drinking three to five cups of coffee per day can lower your risk of clogged arteries that can lead to a heart attack.
Recently, a study of healthy young adults in Korea found that, compared to people who didn’t drink coffee, those who drank three to five cups per day had a lower risk of having calcium deposits in their coronary arteries. Those deposits can be a key indicator of heart disease.
Dr. Eliseo Guallar, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Md., and co-author of the study in the journal Heart, said the participants in the study who drank said amount of coffee had the lowest risk of clogged arteries. And it was even indicated that with only one cup per day, those who drank coffee still had a lower risk than those who did not.
The participants who drank five cups per day had 40 percent less calcium deposits in their coronary arteries. Those who drank one to three cups daily had 35 percent less calcium than those who didn’t drink coffee, and those who drank one cup a day had 23 percent less calcium.
There still isn’t a clear answer as to why coffee decreases the calcium deposits, other than the fact that it is rich in antioxidants. If you’re not a caffeine drinker, fret not, because the same antioxidants still exist in decaf coffee.
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