Professor Tim Spector has referred to something many of us consume daily as a “health drink” in what he has called “good news” for likely millions of people. The health and nutrition expert appeared on Jamie Lang’s Good Company podcast, where he told the host that coffee can “reduce your risk of heart disease by about 30%”.
Jamie asked if the professor was “kidding” before adding: “And heart disease is one of the biggest killers we know?” To which Prof Spector replied: “Correct”.
The expert further explained: “There’s a microbe in all of us called Lawsinobacter that only drinks coffee. If you drink coffee, you’ve got masses of it, it’s growing, it’s there, you’re nourishing it every day.” Those who don’t drink coffee, he added, have small amounts of Lawsinobacter, “transferred perhaps from a kiss from a coffee drinker”, Prof Spector said.
But in these people the microbe “just sits there in its shrivelled form in your gut, waiting for that first cup of coffee, when it can bloom”. He added that for people who don’t want to have caffeine, decaf versions work too.
It comes after a Tulane University study followed more than 40,000 adults over a span of more than 10 years. It found that participants who drank a cup of coffee in the morning were less likely to die from heart disease than people who drank none.