Your Desire for Coffee Could Be a Warning About Your Cardio Health

If one of your morning’s essential rituals is not measured with coffee spoons? Your regular coffee consumption could be telling you more about your cardio health than you think.

According to an Australian study, researchers uncovered causal evidence that genetic code drives your desire for coffee.

The study of close to 400,000 people, published in the Academic Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found people with cardiovascular conditions such as angina, arrhythmia, and high blood pressure were likely to crave less coffee or skip it entirely.

Using data from the UK Biobank, a large-scale health database, researchers analyzed the habitual coffee consumption of 390,435 people, comparing this with baseline levels of systolic and diastolic blood pressure and baseline heart rate.

“People drink coffee for all sorts of reasons – as a pick me up when they’re feeling tired, because it tastes good, or simply because it’s part of their daily routine,” said Elina Hyppönen, lead researcher and Director of University of South Australia Centre for Precision Health.

“But what we don’t recognize is that people subconsciously self-regulate safe levels of caffeine based on how high their blood pressure is, and this is likely a result of a protective genetic a mechanism,” Hyppönen says.