Coffee can cut heart disease risk - but only in women

Drinking a few cups of coffee a day may prevent heart disease, a new study has found.

But before you all get excited – it only works on women. It apparently offers no protection to men – and what makes it worse is that scientists have no idea why.

OK, I’m pretty jealous now. For a moment there, I thought those early morning calls to coffee houses to get my caffeine fix had not been in vain.

People had always gone on about how bad coffee is for you, so the thought those trips might actually be doing me some good - like going to gym (sort of) - was the best news ever.

But, no! Once again God spits in my latte. Anyway, enough about me, because the news that at least half of the world’s population will benefit from supping coffee is to be celebrated (through gritted teeth).

In fact, the US study, published this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found that women who drink two to three cups of coffee a day are 25 per cent less likely to die from heart disease.

So how did they come up with this? Well, researchers asked 84,000 women between 1980 and 2004, and nearly 42,000 men between 1986 and 2004, to fill in questionnaires about their coffee habits and health every two to four years.

Of course, this begs the question why they asked fewer men than women over a shorter period, but we’ll move on.

Anyway, during the course of the study, the women who drank no coffee at all were 25% more likely to suffer from heart disease than those who drank two or three cups a day.

Those who drank decaffeinated coffee also had lower death rates than those who abstained.

However, the scientists involved feel more research is required as they are not sure whether it is something in the coffee itself or whether it’s something to do with the lifestyle of female coffee drinkers which is cutting the risk of premature death.

Study author Dr Esther Lopez-Garcia said:

“Coffee consumption has been linked to various beneficial and detrimental health effects, but data on its relation with death were lacking.

“Coffee consumption was not associated with a higher risk of mortality in middle-aged men and women.

“The possibility of a modest benefit of coffee consumption on heart disease, cancer, and other causes of death needs to be further investigated.”