New study shows coffee drinkers live longer

Three coffees a day keeps the doctor away!

Well, that's what a new study says...

In the largest study of its kind, involving more than 185,000 subjects, it has been revealed that drinking a cup of coffee each day could increase your lifespan by 12%, and two or three cups a day by 18%.

"We cannot say drinking coffee will prolong your life but we see an association," says the study’s lead author, Veronica Setiawan of the University of Southern California. "If you like to drink coffee, drink up! If you're not a coffee drinker, then you need to consider if you should start."

The research suggests people who drink coffee have a lower risk of dying from a host of causes, including several types of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, stroke and liver disease.

The study also showed lower mortality rates were recorded for coffee drinkers across all ethnic groups in the US. 

Marc Gunter of the International Agency for Research on Cancer said: "Importantly, these results were similar across all of the 10 European countries, with variable coffee drinking habits and customs."

It also didn't matter whether they consumed regular or decaffeinated coffee.

Last year the World Health Organisation revised its warnings against coffee.

The study will be published in Annals of Internal Medicine.