Do you love coffee as much as Lorelai Gilmore? If so, you’ll probably be happy to learn that drinking lots of coffee make you live longer. Yay!
Of course, drinking all the coffee on Earth won’t undo how mortality works. We’ve all got to bid this world adieu at some point, but according to a new study—conducted by the Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra (SUN) Project and shared by Science Daily—people who drink coffee typically live longer.
Researchers tracked 19,896 subjects with an average age of 37.7 over the course of 10 years, and after adjusting for variables such as age, sex, and diet, they found that “participants who consumed at least four cups of coffee per day had a 64 percent lower risk of all-cause mortality than those who never or almost never consumed coffee.”
So not only could drinking coffee every day help us live longer, we now have a science-backed reason to throw moderation out the proverbial window. As if we needed one, amirite?
The study also found that the association between drinking loads of coffee and not dying wasn’t significant among participants under the age of 45, but they naturally have a lower overall risk of death anyway. Doy.
Unlike other studies which have shown the life-extending benefits of consuming coffee, the SUN’s study took place in a Mediterranean country, where people’s lifestyles are notoriously healthier than those of most Westerners. And speaking of healthy living, it should be noted that drinking tons of coffee is only beneficial for people who are already healthy—coffee isn’t a magical cure-all.
As Dr Adela Navarro, a cardiologist at Hospital de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain, told Science Daily: “Our findings suggest that drinking four cups of coffee each day can be part of a healthy diet in healthy people.”
So basically, if you’re an otherwise healthy person, coffee is literally life. Feel free to say so next time your parents, partner/s, or co-workers lovingly suggest you switch over to herbal tea.
