Caffeine may love you even more than you love it. Researchers at the School of Medicine have found a possible connection—a correlation but not yet causal evidence—between caffeine consumption and longer life. Metabolites in our blood can trigger an inflammatory process associated with many chronic diseases and increased rates of mortality overall. The Stanford study found that caffeine may counter that inflammation.
Professor Mark Davis, director of the Stanford Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection, says the research team was surprised by how direct the benefit of a favorite beverage may turn out to be, and adds that the way caffeine may combat inflammation is “a very plausible mechanism” for how it works.
What’s brewing next? Close work, says Davis, with clinical associate professor and cardiologist Francois Haddad on how to use what has been learned to cast more light on cardiovascular disease. Follow-up research on heart failure in the aging population could be an area of focus, says Haddad.
