The Nuance
Is Coffee Actually Risky for Your Heart?
A new study contradicts some long-standing medical advice
For years, doctors have warned people to avoid or limit their coffee intake if they’re at risk for heart trouble.
This advice is based in part on the belief that the caffeine in coffee (and other caffeinated drinks) can produce dangerous heartbeat abnormalities known as arrhythmias.
This belief has some research to back it up. A study published in 1980 found an association between the number of cups of coffee a person drank each day and that person’s risk for arrhythmia. There’s also no denying that caffeine is a stimulant, and swallowing a lot of it can rev up your heart and other components of your autonomic nervous system.
But since that 1980 study, follow-up work has mostly failed to find a connection between coffee and arrhythmia. A large and comprehensive new study may finally put to bed the idea that drinking coffee causes dangerous heartbeat abnormalities.
The study appeared last month in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. It analyzed health records from nearly 400,000 people, spanning an average of about five years. It drilled down into the types of arrhythmias people experienced, and it also employed a gene-based form of…
