If your morning routine involves a hot cup of coffee, you’re in luck. New research has found health benefits directly linked to drinking coffee at one particular time of day.
Over the years, experts have slowly concluded the health benefits of coffee outweigh any reasons to avoid it. Recently, Professor Tim Spector spoke on the health benefits of decaf coffee during an episode of the ZOE podcast, revealing there wasn’t much difference between coffee with and without caffeine either.
A new study has now confirmed what time of day it’s best to drink coffee to experience these benefits and revealed that those who drink coffee at other times as well as in the morning may miss out.
When to drink coffee for health benefits
The research, published in the European Heart Journal, found that those who drink coffee in the morning experience benefits, including a 16% reduction in risk of premature death of any cause and a 31% reduction in risk of death from cardiovascular disease. However, those who drink it throughout the day don't see these benefits, with no difference in mortality rates between those who drank coffee all day and those who didn’t drink it at all, suggesting the benefits are exclusive to morning coffee drinkers.
This is the first study that shows it’s not just about how much coffee you drink, but when you drink it, for long-term health benefits.
Professor Lu Qi, the study's lead author, and an expert in nutrition and epidemiology at Tulane University in New Orleans, said: “It’s not just whether you drink coffee or how much you drink, but the time of day when you drink coffee that’s important. We don’t typically give advice about timing in our dietary guidance but perhaps we should be thinking about this in the future.”
In a time where we’re being constantly encouraged to change our routines to improve our health - like strength training to reduce our biological age and aerobic exercise to improve our life expectancy - it’s refreshing to learn that one of our daily habits could be helping our long-term health without us even trying. You don’t even need to drink caffeinated coffee to see the benefits, with similar findings among those who drank decaffeinated coffee.
The study also revealed how many cups of coffee you should drink every morning to see these important benefits. Those who drank two to three cups (known as ‘moderate’ drinkers) and those who drank more than this (known as ‘heavy’ drinkers) in the morning had a lower risk of death. Surprisingly, those who only had one cup of coffee saw a lower reduction in the risk of disease and early death, suggesting that two to three cups is ideal.
The NHS advises against drinking more than four cups of coffee per day due to the caffeine content and blood pressure risk. However, you could drink more than this if you swap your caffeinated coffee for a decaffeinated variety.
The study results were also later verified with further research on a group of just under 1,500 people who filled out detailed weekly food and drink diaries.
The study does not specify whether the participants drank coffee with or without milk, milk alternatives, or sweeteners.
While the study doesn’t specifically say why there is this difference in health benefits between morning and all-day drinkers, experts (not linked to this study) agree that it may be down to the effect of caffeine on our sleep. “Caffeine can interfere with your sleep quality by blocking the action of adenosine, a brain chemical that promotes sleep,” says Dr Faye Begeti, a neuroscientist and sleep specialist. “Even if you don’t have any problems falling asleep, studies show that caffeine consumption can reduce deep sleep and decrease overall sleep efficiency by about 7%.”
Caffeine can also disrupt levels of melatonin, another important brain chemical that helps us sleep, and our circadian rhythms. In turn, this can negatively affect levels of inflammation in the body and blood pressure over time, putting our heart health at risk.
“The thought is, if you consume something anti-inflammatory like coffee, which contains hundreds of polyphenols, it could reduce the risk of something [like heart disease] developing” as it works to bring down inflammation, says Nicola Shubrook, a registered nutritionist with the British Association for Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine who works with Coffee Friend.
As our natural inflammation levels tend to peak in the morning, having an anti-inflammatory like coffee at this time makes perfect sense.
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