Research report shows that drinking coffee does not lead to high blood pressure

Coffee drinking does not cause high blood pressure, research shows.

Because caffeine can cause a temporary rise in blood pressure, many people worry that long-term coffee consumption can lead to high blood pressure.

Healthy women who drank at least six cups of coffee a day were no more likely to develop high blood pressure within 10 years than those who abstained, according to a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Conversely, women who drank 0 to 3 cups of coffee a day had a higher risk of high blood pressure than those who drank coffee regularly or abstained.

No matter how many cups of coffee a day men drank, there was no significant effect on blood pressure, lead author Dr. Ettlewall told Reuters Health. However, coffee abstainers had a lower risk of hypertension than any coffee drinker, but the impact was still "relatively small."

Ettlwal, an associate professor at Utrecht University Medical Center in the Netherlands, said that since the study did not show that drinking coffee was harmful to human health, there was no reason to stop it.

Stop people enjoying coffee.

6400 Dutch men and women with an average age of 40 participated in the 11-year study. Participants must fill in details such as eating habits, lifestyle habits, education and family medicine background.

People who drink less coffee

It's high blood pressure.

After adjusting for other health factors, the researchers found that people who drank less coffee had a higher risk of high blood pressure than those who drank no coffee at all or regularly.

The team believes this may be because people who drink several cups of coffee a day have become accustomed to caffeine causing a brief rise in blood pressure, while those who drink less are still quite sensitive to caffeine's effects.

Even if coffee drinking caused blood pressure to rise in some people, the results did not show that coffee drinking caused heart disease in healthy people, Ettelwal added. However, he stressed that the study focused on healthy adults and that the findings did not apply to people with high blood pressure or other risk factors for heart disease.