iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — If you ever felt that you needed coffee to survive, you may be on to something.

Drinking coffee is linked to a decreased risk of death, according to two large studies published Monday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

One of the most widely consumed beverages in the world, coffee’s potential health benefits have been the subject of curiosity for decades. Research has already suggested that drinking coffee regularly may be tied to a lower risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Now there is evidence that it might have a broader effect, staving off other potential causes of death as well.

One study examined the coffee-drinking patterns of more than 185,000 Americans over a 16-year period. The researchers found that regular coffee consumption was associated with lower risk of dying from all causes – and the more cups of coffee these subjects consumed per day, the greater this apparent benefit. And in fact, those who reported drinking four or more cups per day enjoyed an 18 percent decreased chance of death over the 16-year study period compared to those who said they did not drink coffee at all.

In a second study, researchers in Europe looked at more than 520,000 people across 10 countries over 16 years. This study, too, found that those who drank several cups of coffee a day had a lower risk of death, regardless of country.

Both studies took into account smoking and other factors that could have affected the results.

“I was surprised by how consistently our findings fit in relative to what has been previously published,” said Veronica Setiawan, lead author of the U.S. study and an epidemiologist at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. “It’s surprising and very reassuring. More than half of Americans drink coffee so it’s very important to understand its health impact.”

Setiawan — who admitted that she drinks a cup or two of coffee each day herself — added that her study was the first of this scale to measure the possible effects of coffee consumption across a racial and ethnic spectrum. Her team found that coffee was associated with fewer deaths due to heart disease, cancer, respiratory disease, stroke, diabetes and kidney disease — a finding that echoed true across a variety of ethnic groups including African-Americans, Caucasians, Japanese-Americans and Latinos.

But when it comes to whether we can conclusively call coffee an elixir for long life … other researchers say the science on that answer still needs to percolate.

“Recommending coffee intake to reduce mortality or prevent chronic disease would be premature,” wrote Dr. Eliseo Guallar, professor at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Health, in an accompanying editorial. “However, it is increasingly evident that moderate coffee intake … can be incorporated into a healthy diet.”

Interestingly, in the U.S. study, even decaffeinated coffee was found to be linked to longer life, suggesting that the mechanism for its health benefits lies somewhere other than caffeine. Coffee does contain many bioactive chemicals, including those with antioxidant effects, which have been shown in the past to have positive impacts on health.

In the U.S. alone, coffee is a roughly $48 billion industry, so the news that the beverage might do far more than just wake people up has important implications.

This article was written by Trisha Pasricha, M.D., an internal medicine resident at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

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