Drink Coffee In the Morning for Biggest Health Benefits, Says Study
Coffee is regularly lauded and demonised in equal measure. The high caffeine content in a double espresso is often associated with high-stress levels, sleeping issues and mental health problems.
Yet, some of the best health minds in the world swear by coffee as a health drink. They aren't wrong for that: studies have shown that coffee is associated with a longer life, sharper mind and better exercise performance (which in turn significantly improves your health).
But before you run to brew another mug, it's clear that drinking coffee all day every day isn't the answer. The main reason being that the NHS recommends no more than 400mg of caffeine a day, around four Americanos.
Now, it turns out that when you drink your coffee might matter as much as how much you drink. A new study by researchers at Tulane University in New Orleans decided to look at whether when you drink your coffee improves your health outcomes – and there were some significant results.
The Study
Published in the European Heart Journal, the researchers said they wanted to look at coffee timing as we learn more about the importance of circadian rhythm in our health.
'Intriguingly, coffee has long been used to improve wakefulness and relieve drowsiness due to the stimulating effects of caffeine on the central nervous system. However, drinking coffee later in the day may disrupt the daily circadian rhythms and thus modify the association between the amount of coffee intake and health outcomes,' they wrote.
To find the link, researchers looked at data from 40,725 adults from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and 1,463 adults from the Women’s and Men’s Lifestyle Validation Study who had submitted dietary data.
They then looked at participant mortality rates over a nine-year period. There was a total of 4,295 all-cause deaths, 1,268 cardiovascular disease deaths and 934 cancer deaths over the study period.
The Results
The team found two distinct types of coffee drinkers: morning drinkers - accounting for 36 per cent of participants – and all-day drinkers – making up 14 per cent of participants. Around 48 per cent of people were classed as non-coffee drinkers.
After adjustment for caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee intake amounts, sleep hours and other confounders, researchers found one type of drinker had much better health outcomes. The morning drinkers had a significantly lower risk of all-cause and cardiovascular disease-specific deaths compared with non-coffee drinkers.
Even heavy amounts of coffee drunk in the morning (up to three cups a day) were associated with a lower risk of death. The effects were the same for caffeinated and decaffeinated drinkers.
The all-day coffee drinkers had no significant association with mortality compared with those who didn't drink coffee.
What This Means For Us
Drink your coffee early, say the researchers. While they didn't investigate why early coffee is better for our health than drinking it throughout the day, they pointed to other research that shows it's likely because of how coffee impacts our sleep cycle and inflammation.
'Consuming coffee in the afternoon or evening may disrupt circadian rhythms. A previous clinical trial showed that heavy coffee consumption in the afternoon or evening was associated with a 30 per cent decrease in peak melatonin production in night-time compared to controls,' say the researchers.
Melatonin is the hormone that spikes in the evening to make us feel sleepy, and low levels of it are associated with health risks. However, this impact is only relevant to caffeinated coffee.
Explaining why decaffeinated coffee in the morning may have more health benefits than decaf all day, researchers looked at the fact that the main health benefits of coffee are the anti-inflammatory properties of the beans. They noted that the body's inflammatory markers have internal circadian patterns, where they are typically highest in the morning and then gradually decline until reaching their lowest level around 5 pm.
'When the amounts of coffee intake are similar, the anti-inflammatory effect of a pattern of coffee consumption concentrated in the morning may be more beneficial than that of a pattern of coffee consumption spread across morning, afternoon, and evening,' they wrote.
The Bottom Line
Drinking coffee can make you healthy, but not if it interrupts your body's natural sleep rhythm. Stick to morning coffee for the biggest health benefits.
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