Coffee drinking time and mortality: When is the best time to drink coffee?
Around 70% of adults in the United States of America consume coffee daily. That is about 183 million adults who drink coffee. Moderate daily consumption is typically linked to various health benefits, ranging from improved brain function to reduced risks of Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and even death. But when is the best time to drink it? This article explores newly published research that examines the patterns of coffee consumption timing among the U.S. population and assesses their relationships with different health outcomes.
To begin, Xuan Wang et al. conducted an observational study of two different patterns of coffee drinking: morning consumption and all-day consumption. The study included “40,725 adults from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999-2018” and “1463 adults from the Women’s and Men’s Lifestyle Validation Study” (Wang et al. 1). Furthermore, all participants recorded full dietary data throughout the time under study. The team employed cluster analysis to spot patterns of coffee drinking time. They also dived into the joint association between these patterns in coffee drinking time, amount consumed, and the risk of all-cause vs cause-specific mortality.
The team used observational study methodology to assess these patterns. Coffee intake, including caffeinated and decaffeinated, was categorized into morning, afternoon, and evening periods, and average consumption frequencies were calculated. To test the robustness of the data, they examined identified patterns of coffee consumption to see if they remained consistent under different conditions or datasets. For instance, they reviewed data ranging over various “age, sex, family income, smoking status, diagnosed chronic conditions and short sleep duration” (Wang et al 4).
In conclusion, morning coffee drinkers had a significantly lower risk of all-cause mortality than non-coffee drinkers. They also had a lower risk for cause-specific mortality, such as cardiovascular disease-specific mortality, but not for cancer-specific mortality. The all-day type drinkers, however, showed no significant association with all-cause, cardiovascular-specific, or cancer-specific mortality. Regarding the amount consumed, higher coffee consumption was generally associated with a lower risk of all-cause and cardiovascular disease-specific mortality, but not cancer-specific mortality particularly among morning-type coffee drinkers, but not among all-day drinkers.
Works Cited:
Wang, Xuan et al. “Coffee drinking timing and mortality in US adults.” European heart journal, ehae871. 8 Jan. 2025, doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehae871
Xuan Wang, Hao Ma, Qi Sun, Jun Li, Yoriko Heianza, Rob M Van Dam, Frank B Hu, Eric Rimm, JoAnn E Manson, Lu Qi, Coffee drinking timing and mortality in US adults, European Heart Journal, 2025;, ehae871, https://doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehae871
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