Are you drinking a cup of coffee right now? Congratulations, you may be lowering your risk of stroke, according to study of nearly 35,000 women published Thursday in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.
The study led by Susanna Larsson of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm followed women aged 49 to 83 for an average of 10 years, and found that those who drank more than one cup of coffee a day had a 22% to 25% lowered risk of stroke, compared with women who drank less. Further, the study found, drinking little or no coffee was actually associated with a slight increase in stroke risk.
"Some women have avoided consuming coffee because they have thought it is unhealthy," said Larsson in a statement. "In fact, increasing evidence indicates that moderate coffee consumption may decrease the risk of some diseases such as diabetes, liver cancer and possibly stroke."
Still, the authors say their findings are preliminary and shouldn't change people's coffee-drinking habits. The past medical literature on the impact of coffee on cardiovascular health has been mixed, but much data support the current findings. As USA Today's Janice Lloyd reported:
The results are consistent with findings on 83,076 women in the Nurses Health Study in the USA in 2009. In that study, women who drank four or more cups of coffee a day had a 20% reduced risk of stroke, compared with women who had less than one cup per month. That study distinguished between caffeinated and decaf; the decaf group had a slightly lower risk.
The women in the Swedish study were not asked whether they drank decaf or regular coffee, but most Swedes drink caffeinated coffee, Larsson noted.
