Three cups of coffee a day is beneficial to the heart, but only if the coffee is the right kind.

A large study has revealed some crucial information about your drinking habits.

In recent years, research has discovered the proven benefits of the stimulant beverage that the majority of us require to begin our days, even when some believed it wasn’t healthy. Researchers have now reversed their positions.

This latest study is particularly fascinating and relevant since the data is comprehensive, having been conducted over a decade and included over half a million participants.

Researchers noted that those who drank coffee on a regular basis were 12 percent less likely to die than those who didn’t. They also had a one-fifth lower risk of heart/cardiovascular disease or stroke than individuals who don’t consume coffee.

But these gratifying findings have an important asterisk to pay attention to. The health benefits stemmed only from drinking coffee from ground beans, not instant coffee.

The researchers discovered that drinking more than three cups of coffee per day had no additional health benefits. However, they pointed out that, in addition to caffeine, coffee has a number of other minerals and antioxidants that have been associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, dementia, and cancer. Coffee drinking has been linked to an elevated risk of high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease death in previous research.

Research for this new study was done by the universities of Semmelweis in Budapest and Queen Mary in London in partnership. According to Dr. Stephen Petersen of Queen Mary University, moderate coffee use is neither harmful nor good to cardiovascular health.

Appetite suppressant, helps keep weight under control

Over half (58 percent) of the study’s participants consumed three or more cups of coffee each day, with 22 percent reporting no coffee at all. The rest of the group consumed at least three cups of coffee every day. The study, which was published in the journal European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, found that those who drank between 0.5-3 cups of coffee daily had a 13% reduced mortality risk than those who drank no coffee at all.

Coffee drinkers had a 17 percent reduced risk of dying from cardiovascular disease and a 21 percent lower chance of suffering a stroke than non-coffee drinkers. In addition, coffee drinkers were less likely to develop diabetes.

Caffeine is also an appetite suppressant, which means it may help avoid obesity and its associated medical complications.

Researchers also discovered that a fifth of those who drank instant coffee received no health benefits. Instant coffee has more caffeine, antioxidants, and acrylamide, a chemical found in some foods that may increase the risk of cancer and lead to nervous system damage.

The researchers believe that coffee’s beneficial benefits on health can be explained by changes in the heart structure observed in persons who consume it on a regular basis. They looked at MRI scans of 30,000 research participants’ functioning of the heart and discovered that those who drank coffee had healthier hearts. Participants who consumed a moderate-to-high amount of coffee had larger heart chambers, allowing their hearts to pump more blood, according to the scans.

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