Busted! Coffee doesn’t actually make your heart ‘race’, finds study

As much as we love our morning cuppa, the science on coffee’s health benefits or lack thereof can be quite confusing. New research has now busted one major side effect that is commonly associated with the drink!

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While some studies stand firmly against its consumption, other experts swear by a controlled coffee intake and blame the milk, cream and sugar for all the adverse correlations. One such side-effect long linked to coffee is that drinking it can make your heart ‘race’ or cause heart palpitations, which is called cardiac arrhythmia in medical terms.

But a study in JAMA Internal Medicine, analysing consumption patterns of over 386,000 people over a three-year period, claims that drinking coffee regularly may, in fact, lower the risk of developing an arrhythmia, such as atrial fibrillation in which the heart flutters in the chest.

The research team from the University of California San Francisco explained that the belief that coffee makes you jittery was born from older, small studies, including one based on only male physicians. The lead author added that a moderate intake of coffee is more beneficial than harmful to health, as per a review of 201 meta-analyses.

Emerging evidence supports the claim that coffee may even play a role in reducing cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular and liver disease and overall mortality.

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