Your coffee addiction may have a surprising health benefit.
Just one cup of joe is associated with reduced occurrence of atrial fibrillation (AFib), a common form of abnormal heartbeat that causes your heart to race and can lead to blood clots, stroke or heart failure. That’s the finding of the DECAF (Does Eliminating Coffee Avoid Fibrillation?) study published Nov. 9 in the medical journal JAMA, which aimed to answer how coffee affects those with irregular heartbeats.
In a six-month clinical trial of 200 patients with AFib, coffee-drinkers averaging one cup per day were 47% less likely to have AFib episodes compared to 64% of non-coffee drinkers. The findings contrast with the traditional assumption that coffee promotes unhealthy heart rhythms, according to the study.
You can read the rest of this USA TODAY article after the jump.
