Study Says 4 Coffees Daily Lowers Your Chance Of Death, So Starbucks Here We Come

You can now feel zero guilt for making your third (or fourth, or fifth...) run to Starbucks today. A new study presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress revealed that drinking more coffee could actually lower your risk of death. If you're now giddily wondering: how much coffee is good for me and can I now live forever – the scientists thankfully had some pretty specific statistics for how to proceed.

The study, conducted at Hospital de Navarra in Pamplona, Spain, pulled together 20,000 participants and followed up with them over the course of ten years. Those who drank at least four cups of coffee per day had a 64% lower rate of death than the participants who either never drank coffee or rarely did.

Meanwhile, those who were 45 years old and up and drank two additional cups of coffee a day had a 30% lower rate of death.

According to Dr. Adela Navarro, a cardiologist at Hospital de Navarra, factoring a few cups of joe into your day is a very smart move. She explained,

Our findings suggest that drinking four cups of coffee each day can be part of a healthy diet in healthy people.

Yup, I can definitely get behind that.

Plus, there's actually so, so many more positive effects to drinking coffee.

Which means you can stop feeling bad that your local barista already knows your name by heart.

First off, it can help out your gym game. According to The New York Times, caffeine increases your body's ability to burn fat and it makes you more alert, which means no more wanting to lie down and take a nap mid-planking. It can also give you a ton of antioxidants, makes your skin glow (yes please) and can prevent colon cancer.

If all of that isn't enough to make you start up the roaster, there's more. Despite the not-so-attractive effects of coffee breath, the drink actually does wonders for your teeth, and can prevent inflammation in the gums and jawbone. And the pièce de résistance? It makes you smarter!

Yup, that's right, drinking coffee blocks the neurotransmitters that make you feel sleepy during the day – leading to more productive work.

So, basically, in the immortal words of Lorelai Gilmore, let's hear it for "coffee, coffee, coffee!"