Drinking coffee can add years to your life, scientists have discovered.
A study of almost half a million older people showed that the risk of death decreased the more cups they consumed.
Too much caffeine used to be considered unhealthy, but the study found that the more coffee consumed, the less likely people were to die from heart and respiratory disease, stroke, injuries, accidents, diabetes and even infections.
Dr Neal Freedman, of the National Cancer Institute in the United States - where the research was done - said drinking two or three cups of coffee a day reduced the risk of an early death by 10 to 15 per cent.
But he added that drinking more than two to three cups were of little benefit, because those who drank more - up to six cups - did not seem to reap any more benefits.
The participants, aged 50 to 71, were followed for 12 years and revealed a clear trend.
Dr Freedman said the main obstacle to coffee drinkers who wanted to increase their longevity was smoking.
'In our study, the participants who drank coffee were far more likely to smoke cigarettes, which is a very strong risk factor for death,' he said.
He added that coffee drinking is associated with many behaviours linked to poor health such as drinking too much alcohol, excessive red meat consumption and leading a sedentary lifestyle.
'All of those risk factors are usually associated with increased risk of death, which they were in our study too,' he added.
The research did not discover how coffee reduced mortality and Dr Freedman and his colleagues have called for more studies to identify the chemicals in caffeine that may stave off certain conditions.
'Coffee could be [working by] affecting blood pressure,' he said.'It is possible that different compounds in the coffee are important, too.'
Dr Freedman added that it was difficult to ascertain whether normal coffee was any more beneficial than the decaffeinated variety.
The study was published in the Journal of Caffeine Research./dailymail
