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A new study has revealed that young adults who suffer from mild cases of hypertension (high blood pressure levels) have a greater chance of experiencing heart attacks and developing heart disease if they drink caffeinated coffee.
It’s a pretty unexpected finding as health experts generally agree that regularly drinking coffee has a lot of health benefits. Previous research has shown that the hot beverage improves our performance at school and at work, keeps type 2 diabetes from developing, allows obese and overweight people to lose more weight, aids men with erectile dysfunction (ED), protects against Alzheimer’s disease, and helps colon cancer patients live longer lives.
But having said all of this, Dr. Lucio Mos, cardiologist working at the Hospital of San Daniele del Friuli (Udine, Italy) and lead researcher on the study, offered a statement informing that “There is controversy surrounding the long-term cardiovascular and metabolic effects of coffee consumption in patients with hypertension”.
What’s more, this new study was specifically designed to investigate whether or not “coffee drinking had an effect on the risk of cardiovascular events, and if the association was mediated by effects on blood pressure and glucose metabolism”.
To reach their conclusions, the researchers gathered data from 1.201 non-diabetic subjects in the 18 to 45 age group, all with stage 1 hypertension. Basically they either had a systolic blood pressure of somewhere between 140 mm/Hg and 159 mm/Hg, and / or a diastolic blood pressure of somewhere between 90 mm/Hg and 99 mm/Hg.
Dr. Mos and his team looked at the subjects’ coffee consumption habits and identified three (3) groups – non-drinkers who didn’t drink caffeinated coffee at all, moderate drinkers who drank between one (1) and three (3) caffeinated coffee cups per day, and heavy drinkers who drank at least four (4) caffeinated coffee cups per day.
The researchers looked at each group’s rate of metabolizing caffeinated coffee and at each group’s chances of developing prediabetes, as hypertension patients often develop type 2 diabetes at a later stage.
They concluded that heavy drinkers who metabolized caffeinated coffee at a slow pace were the only ones with an elevated risk of developing prediabetes, especially if they happened to be overweight or obese.
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