How three cups of coffee a day may help you evade serious illness?

 How three cups of coffee a day may help you evade serious illness?

The disease in question is called cardiometabolic multimorbidity, or CM, and more than 34 million people in 2018 – the latest national numbers – suffered from it. And the numbers are growing. People with the disease suffer from having two cardiac risk factors at the same time, type-2 diabetes and heart disease, for example. But a new study says three cups of coffee a day may reduce your risk of developing the disease. KERA's Sam Baker discusses this with Dr. Sreenivas Gudimetla, a cardiologist with Texas Health Fort Worth.

What's behind the Multimorbidity?
People are prone to developing type 2 diabetes mellitus. As we get older, we develop hypertension over time. These risk factors, along with other risk factors such as high cholesterol, lack of exercise and physical activity, and certainly genetic components, contribute to an increased risk of development of cholesterol plaques in both the heart arteries and all other arteries to other organs, including the brain, the kidneys, and the lower extremities. And over time, event rates such as heart attacks and strokes and lack of blood flow to the limbs increases. So, all that might add up to a point whereby you might have more than one risk factor at one time. That is correct.

The study did not specify cause and effect. But why would three cups of coffee or tea, with the caffeine decrease the risk of CM?
There has been a great deal of research that has shown some advantage, related to the reduction of cardiovascular disease. Putative mechanisms include:
• an advantage in terms of what we refer to as insulin sensitivity. When you have increased insulin sensitivity, you have a reduction in blood sugars, which, of course, has a beneficial effect.
• Some studies show that there may be a potential reduction in LDL cholesterol,
• There is also some thought that caffeinated beverages may have antioxidant effects.

We're talking about coffee and tea. But if a person consumed soda, would that achieve the same thing?
Not even remotely, due to the fact that soda truly has loads less caffeine in its makeup than the coffee does. Of course, you wouldn't want that much sugar to begin with that came along with the soda, I guess.
Absolutely not.

I guess what this really means for the folks who can go out, rush to Starbucks, feeling they've got a safety net around them, is that we actually don't know for a fact that this will lower steam, but there is a chance it might.
I think what was really taken home from there is that there is a chance it might lower cardiovascular mortality.

Meanwhile, how to avoid CM?
The number one factor reducing cardiovascular mortality is behaviours and behaviours starting very young in age, such as:
• Learning how to eat a heart-healthy diet
• Exercising
• Don't smoke

If you keep an ideal weight, then your risk of developing diabetes in the future goes way down. We're truly in an epidemic at this time with regard to obesity, and we really see a much younger cohort of patients developing Type Two Diabetes Mellitus. Another thing you will want to do is perform a blood pressure control; know your cholesterol numbers, avoid behaviors that increase cardiovascular risk-particularly tobacco use.