Drinking three cups of coffee a day prevents serious illnesses, according to a Chinese study.

A recent study found that moderate and regular caffeine consumption reduces the risk of multiple cardiometabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease and stroke. “Drinking three cups of coffee or 200 to 300 mg of caffeine per day may help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease,” said the study’s lead author, Zhaofu Qi, MD, PhD. from the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Faculty of Medicine, Sozhou University, China.

The study was published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. from the American Endocrine Societyestablished a comparison between non-caffeine consumers, consumers who consumed less than 100 mg of caffeine per day, and moderate coffee consumers (3 cups per day). They had no caffeine (200-300 mg per day). The latter presented a lower risk of the above-mentioned diseases.

Qi and his colleagues based their findings on data from the UK Biobank, a large and detailed study of more than 500,000 participants aged 37 to 73 years.

The resulting participant population included a total of 172,315 people who did not have cardiovascular disease at baseline for the analysis of caffeine consumption and 188,091 people for the analysis of coffee and tea consumption.

Participants’ cardiovascular outcomes were assessed using self-reports, primary care data, hospital data and death records linked to the UK Biobank.

Coffee and caffeine intake at all levels were inversely associated with the risk of multiple metabolic cardiovascular diseases in participants who did not have these diseases. The study concluded that those who consumed coffee or caffeine in moderation had a lower risk.