If your body is telling you not to drink that extra cup of coffee, there’s likely a reason why, according to Australian researchers.
“Listen to your body, it’s more in tune with your health than you may think,” said lead researcher Professor Elina Hyppönen, Director of the Australian Centre for Precision Health at the University of South Australia.
Ms Hyppönen and her researchers from the university and the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute discovered that cardio health ‑ as reflected in blood pressure and heart rate – influences coffee consumption. People, they say, tend to subconsciously self-regulate to prevent the over-consumption of caffeine.
“People drink coffee for all sorts of reasons – as a pick me up when they’re feeling tired, because it tastes good, or simply because it’s part of their daily routine,” said Hyppönen.
“But what we don’t recognise is that people subconsciously self-regulate safe levels of caffeine based on how high their blood pressure is, and this is likely a result of a protective genetic mechanism.”
Researchers studied data from the UK Biobank to examine the habitual coffee consumption of 390,435 people. They compared this information against baseline levels of systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and baseline heart rate. Causal relationships were determined using an epidemiological method to examine the causal effect of a certain exposure on disease called ‘Mendelian randomisation’.
The data revealed to the researchers that people who drink a lot of coffee are likely to be more genetically tolerant of caffeine, and how much coffee a person drinks is likely to be an indicator of their cardio health.
So your love of a long black could be in your genes.
