PROF ROB GALLOWAY: The cheap and widely available elixir of life that YOU should take this new year to reduce your risk of cancer, prevent diabetes, heart attacks and strokes – and even use as a beneficial Ozempic

Are you thinking about your New Year’s resolutions – perhaps work-related, or managing your finances, or yes, health-related?

The bad news is that it can be difficult to stick to those good intentions, because study after study shows that few of us succeed.

But I have a very easy health-promoting solution for you; Not only is it cheap, but it can help prevent a whole range of diseases, has benefits for your mental wellbeing and, crucially, it’s incredibly easy to integrate into your daily life.

And that is: drink more coffee.

If exercise is the panacea that everyone should take, then coffee is the elixir of life that everyone should drink; caffeinated or not, it doesn’t matter because it’s the coffee itself that is so good for you.

The problem is that it has a bad reputation because of previous bad science.

Observational studies from when I was in medical school linked coffee consumption to several conditions ranging from cancer to heart attacks and anxiety.

However, it turns out it wasn’t coffee that was causing people’s poor health: 30 years ago, drinking coffee was often associated with smoking, which was the real culprit – in other words, people drank coffee with their cigarettes.

But the myth persisted – in my own case, I even vowed to give up coffee as one of my New Year’s resolutions in 2000. How wrong I was!

Because the latest evidence, published in November in the journal Nature Microbiology, shows that coffee does wonderful things for our gut microbiome (the colony of microbes that live there).

In a review of studies on more than 100 different foods and drinks, coffee – both caffeinated and decaffeinated – came out on top for producing the highest levels of good bacteria. Coffee drinkers in particular had eight times more of a ‘good’ bacteria called Lawsonibacter asaccharolyticus. When food breaks down, it produces short-chain fatty acids that help cause the death of damaged cells, the cells that are the precursors to cancer.

This supports previous research showing a link between drinking coffee and lower rates of colon cancer – and higher survival rates if you do have it. This includes a study from earlier this year in the International Journal of Cancer, which found that patients who drank four cups of coffee a day had a 32 percent lower risk of their cancer returning (although there are no additional benefits to drinking more than this – in fact the benefits were slightly reduced.)

Numerous other studies show the benefits of both decaffeinated and caffeinated black coffee (not the milky or sweet options with syrups) in reducing your risk of rectal, liver, kidney and uterine cancer.

So what’s going on? Although we don’t yet fully understand the mechanism, we do know that coffee is rich in plant compounds, especially chlorogenic acids, which have strong antioxidant properties. Antioxidants stop the damaging effects of free radicals, harmful molecules produced by everything from our body’s processes to pollution, which directly damage cell DNA, leading to mutations that can cause cancer.

When you drink coffee, you have higher levels of polyphenols and – it is thought – less DNA damage.

We also know that coffee contains compounds with anti-inflammatory effects, cafestol and kahweol. These normally help control the body’s response to injury, but an excess can cause too much inflammation – and chronic inflammation leads to conditions such as arthritis, heart attacks and cancer.

This also applies to decaffeinated coffee, but if you do choose caffeinated coffee, an added bonus is that caffeine itself reduces inflammation and can calm an overactive immune system. It can also cause older cells in the body to die, which can prevent the formation of cancer.

And it’s not just about cancer – a 2014 review of studies published in the journal Diabetologia found that the incidence of type 2 diabetes (caused by elevated blood sugar levels) fell by 12 percent for every two cups of caffeinated coffee and by 11 percent for every two cups of decaffeinated coffee people consumed per day. It is believed that chlorogenic acids and other compounds improve the cells’ response to insulin so that they absorb sugar from the blood.

Coffee also reduces the risk of heart attacks, strokes and heart failure. People who drank two to three cups of coffee a day had a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and premature death, according to research published in 2022 in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology. Crucially, the researchers took into account other factors that influence cardiovascular disease, such as ethnicity, obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes and smoking status. This means that we can be fairly certain that any differences are due to the coffee.

All types of coffee – instant, ground or decaffeinated coffee – had this positive effect, with the greatest benefit seen when drinking two to three cups per day. And the best-performing coffee was ground (reassuringly the kind I have in my cafetiere or as espresso), leading to a 27 percent reduction in premature mortality. This may be because more of the beneficial compounds are lost when coffee is manufactured to make it instant or decaffeinated.

What surprised me most about the study was that caffeinated coffee also reduces the risks of heart rhythm problems such as atrial fibrillation (AF) – the biggest risk factor for stroke.

We know that very high doses of caffeine can cause AF because it overstimulates the sinoatrial node, a muscle that generates an electrical signal that controls your heart rate and rhythm.

And so the assumption was that even low doses could increase your risk and that anyone with AF should avoid coffee altogether.

But the evidence shows that moderate coffee consumption (two to three cups per day) is safe if you have AF and does not increase your risk of developing it — “and can be enjoyed as a heart-healthy behavior,” the researchers said.

I always thought coffee was dangerous for people with high blood pressure. But while it may cause a small increase immediately after drinking, modest consumption won’t raise your blood pressure over time.

Coffee – specifically chlorogenic acid – can also act as a natural ozempic by simulating the release of the appetite suppressant hormone GLP 1, as the drug does.

Coffee also improves your brain health; Caffeine can increase levels of a chemical called cAMP, which in turn increases the production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein crucial for maintaining our memory.

It is also great for sports performance: one cup can increase cAMP levels, which also increases the speed at which our muscles contract.

Studies have shown that coffee (particularly caffeinated coffee) has a range of beneficial effects on mood, alertness and cognition, with no evidence that anxiety increases with moderate consumption.

Finally, it doesn’t dry you out; the amount of fluid you drink counteracts the diuretic effect of caffeine.

There are some disadvantages of caffeinated coffee if it is taken at the wrong time or if you drink too much. It does make it harder to fall asleep, so I drink caffeinated coffee until lunch and then decaffeinated.

And too much caffeine can be dangerous: I’ve seen people overdose on high-caffeine energy drinks, combined with caffeine supplements and caffeine gum. They look as if they have had a stroke because of the temporary damage to the parts of the brain involved in coordination.

In short: as long as you drink three to four cups a day (decaffeinated or caffeine-free), ideally black and certainly without sweets, a coffee habit can only be a good thing.

So here’s to a Happy New Year – and guilt-free coffee drinking in 2025!

@drrobgalloway