This “Bad Habit” is GREAT For Your Heart

Cardiologists are notorious for telling their patients what they should (and shouldn’t) be eating and drinking.

More often than not, their advice is absolutely TERRIBLE. 

Case in point: The advice to stay away from one particular beverage could be one of the WORST things you can do for your heart.

Study after study is proving that this “forbidden” beverage can reduce your risk of developing heart disease—and can even keep you from dying from it.

I’ll admit it: Coffee is one of my favorite drinks. In fact, I have a piping hot cup sitting next to my computer right now.

And with every small sip I take, I’m taking a giant leap toward keeping my heart healthy and disease-free.

Study after study has shown that drinking coffee protects your heart in a number of different ways.

But before I get into that, let’s first bust the myth that coffee causes heart disease. 

Two large meta-analyses including over 1 million people found ZERO connection between drinking coffee and developing heart disease. And one of those studies showed that drinking 3-5 cups of coffee per day actually REDUCED the risk of heart disease.

Even more important, studies have shown that people who drink coffee are less likely to die from heart attacks, strokes, and heart failure.

Many people believe that these benefits are due to coffee’s high concentration of polyphenols. That’s no doubt a factor, but it’s not the only one.

According to a recent study, the secret to coffee’s heart-disease benefits is found in the caffeine (yes, the caffeine you’ve been told to avoid).

Researchers examined the effects of caffeine on heart tissue of humans and lab animals. What they found was that caffeine had a beneficial impact on blood vessel walls, making them more elastic.

In fact, the blood vessels actually LOOKED younger. 

That’s right, caffeine has the ability to literally turn back the clock on your blood vessels.

Remember, stiff blood vessels lead to hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis), which is a leading risk factor in developing heart disease.

These benefits showed up at the equivalent of drinking 4 cups of coffee per day.

I’m already on number 2. How about you?

To a brighter day,

Dr. Richard Gerhauser, M.D.