You shouldn’t drink coffee if you have heart problems. Or is it? Many myths and prejudices surround this topic. So let’s take a closer look at the whole thing.

Health hazard or benefit? The effect of coffee on the heart is much debated.

Coffee is good for our hearts, but there are downsides too. This is the result of several studies in recent years that have attempted to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of coffee for health. The conclusion: properly enjoyed coffee protects the heart rather than harming it. However, many coffee drinkers have many bad habits, one of which is smoking.

Where do the prejudices against coffee come from?

Unfortunately, coffee’s bad reputation began shortly after its Europeanization in the 17th-18th centuries. It was considered a drug, Johann Sebastian Bach warned against it in his coffee cantata, and it was sometimes banned or limited in European countries. In the 20th century, science finally took on the matter and determined in a long series of statistics that there was a significant connection between diseases of civilization and the consumption of coffee. In Western countries, people drink more coffee and suffer from certain diseases, including cardiovascular disease, to about the same extent. But is this connection correct? Statistically it seems to be proven, but how does the causal chain really run?

coffee and statistics

The statistics really don’t lie, but the researchers were blind in one eye. The actual connection looks like this: In Western countries, at the latest in the second half of the 20th century, a lifestyle was established that includes several formative factors. Coffee is one of them, but also a sedentary lifestyle, high-fat food, too much alcohol and smoking and a lot of counterproductive stress are also part of it. Most of these factors, individually and especially in combination, contribute to the deterioration of the health situation, but coffee is obviously not one of them. The fact that smokers enjoy being coffee drinkers is what gave the coffee brother its bad image, for which its evil sister cigarette is actually responsible. Properly enjoyed coffee protects the heart rather than harming it.

The truth is, coffee promotes heart health

The truth is that coffee counteracts hardening of the arteries (from four cups a day) and thus protects heart health. A Boston study of 1.3 million people has impressively demonstrated this connection. It was shown that the risk of heart disease decreased from four cups of coffee per day, and that it did not increase again with even more coffee consumption. A study with 30,000 subjects was also presented in Korea. This supported the Boston findings on arteriosclerosis and also suggested that these findings applied to coffee or non-coffee smokers, obese people and people with high blood pressure.

This means that coffee promotes heart health even independently of other habits.