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Good news: Coffee basically makes you immortal

July 13, 2017
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Shutterstock / Valentyn Volkov

Science is hard and includes a seemingly bottomless swirl of absurd words and phrases such as “continuum” and “polyphenols” and “irreversible climate change,” so it helps to only read studies that pertain directly to your life.

For instance, I am an extremely busy content provider, and science is a diverse field that apparently covers food, rocks and outer space, and I don't know who has the time to keep up with all of its endless flip-flopping — eggs are good for you, no they're bad, and you should drink eight cups of water a day, except that doesn’t work, and you can't eat “unprocessed cheeses” when you’re pregnant, which was pretty inconvenient for me.

But this policy allows for two new studies that confirm this pleasing news: people who drink coffee live longer than those who do not. This headline caused me to start shivering with glee, though I can’t be sure if that was the headline or the caffeine, because if you’re like me you put down enough coffee to kill anyone over the age of 53; enough coffee to, if distilled properly, power an oscillating fan; enough coffee that you’re pretty much just chewing on beans like they were tobacco. If drinking coffee makes you live longer than those who avoid it, there’s a solid chance I’m an immortal. Which is fine, except if I have to start using my obscenity-of-nature powers for good or something. In either event, I’m getting on 9 lists for season tickets.

Anyway, the studies, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, a title that remains very difficult not to joke about, involved two large focus groups. The first surveyed more than a half-million people in 10 European countries, and revealed that those who drank three or more cups a day had a lower risk of death than those freaks who didn’t drink any at all, though it was difficult to congratulate them because they were in the bathroom all the time.

The second focused on nearly 200,000 participants from primarily non-white populations, and found that people who drank two to four cups a day — around here we call that "the crossword puzzle," but whatever — had a 18% lower risk of death compared to those freaks who didn't drink any at all. These findings mirror studies that focused on majority white populations, said Veronica Wendy Setiawan, associate professor of preventative medicine at USC and one of the study’s leaders and someone with probably like a billion Starbucks stars.

"The takeaway message would be that drinking a couple cups of coffee a day doesn't do you any harm, and actually, it might be doing you some good," said Marc Gunter, who co-authored the European study and my new favorite non-time traveling scientist.So rejoice, my brown-toothed friends — that habit that’s amplifying your heart and draining your bank account will, at least, let those things happen until the cold end of time.