Limit coffee-drinking to this time window to lower early death risk, study suggests

Drinking coffee has repeatedly been linked with better heart health and prolonged life. But the benefits of coffee consumption could depend on when you drink it, new research has found.

Drinking coffee has repeatedly been linked with better heart health and prolonged life. But the benefits of coffee consumption could depend on when you drink it, new research has found.

Limiting coffee intake to the morning, it turns out, may be best — and that seems to be regardless of the amount consumed and other potentially influential factors, according to a study published Tuesday in the European Heart Journal.

“This is the first study testing coffee drinking timing patterns and health outcomes,” said lead author Dr. Lu Qi, HCA Regents Distinguished Chair and professor at Tulane University’s Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans, in a news release. “We don’t typically give advice about timing in our dietary guidance, but perhaps we should be thinking about this in the future.”

Most past research investigating participants’ coffee intake over time have found moderate levels of coffee consumption may be associated with lower risks of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and premature death, according to the latest study. But scientific evidence of whether factors such as genetics, amount consumed or added sweeteners affect these relationships has been inconsistent or, at times, controversial, the authors said.

The authors studied the dietary and health data of 40,725 adults age 18 and older from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey conducted from 1999 to 2018. During 10 cycles over the years, those participants provided details of their dietary intake from the previous day. The authors also included a subgroup of 1,463 adults, from both the women’s and men’s versions of the Lifestyle Validation Study, who had completed at least one weeklong dietary record.

Both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee were included, and timing was categorized in three periods: morning (from 4 a.m. to 11:59 a.m.), afternoon (from 12 p.m. to 4:59 p.m.) and evening (from 5 p.m. to 3:59 a.m.).

The researchers identified two patterns of timing of consumption: morning and all day. By the end of the median follow-up period of nearly 10 years, there were 4,295 deaths from all causes, 1,268 from cardiovascular disease and 934 from cancer.