Is coffee good or bad for your heart?

Many people choose to start their day with a cup of coffee, and when they are tired, they will have a cup of coffee to “recharge their batteries”. In recent years, many local coffee brands have been rising, and the number of coffee consumers has also increased significantly. Although coffee is popular, its effect on heart health has always been controversial.

In the 1960s, coffee was considered a risk factor for coronary artery disease, although later studies have shown that only heavy coffee drinking (more than 5 or 6 cups a day) may damage the heart. Some studies have also shown that the adverse effects of excessive coffee drinking are partly due to different lifestyle preferences of such people compared with those who drink coffee in moderation.

Coffee contains caffeine, a stimulant. So, can drinking coffee cause abnormal heart beats, palpitations or atrial fibrillation?

According to a 2019 study, people who drink moderate amounts of coffee (1 to 3 cups per day) actually have a lower risk of atrial fibrillation. At the same time, those who drink more or less coffee do not increase or decrease their likelihood of atrial fibrillation. Like many dietary studies, this study was observational, surveying people about the amount of coffee they consumed through questionnaires, and then tracking their health for many years to draw research conclusions. This method has certain limitations. But recently a new study took a different approach, this study directly measured the short-term effects of drinking coffee.

02 Sports performance and sleep time

The new trial offers an important direction for research. One of the findings was that people took more steps on days they drank coffee, which supports other studies that have shown that caffeine can slightly improve athletic performance. On the other hand, caffeine’s adverse effects on sleep are well known, and insufficient sleep is increasingly recognized as a risk factor for cardiovascular health.

Here, it is difficult to assess whether the increased amount of exercise can offset the adverse effects of reduced sleep time.

Like all research, the new study has limitations. For example, it included only relatively young, healthy people who drank coffee. So the findings may not apply to older people, who are more likely to experience palpitations. Also, the study did not include non-coffee drinkers.