Can drinking coffee lower your risk of death?

Older adults who drank coffee — caffeinated or decaffeinated — had a lower risk of death overall than others who did not drink coffee, according a study by researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, and AARP.

Neal Freedman, Ph.D., Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, NCI, lead the study, which examined the association between coffee drinking and risk of death in 400,000 U.S. men and women ages 50 to 71.

"Coffee is one of the most widely consumed beverages in America, but the association between coffee consumption and risk of death has been unclear,” said Freedman. “We found coffee consumption to be associated with lower risk of death overall, and of death from a number of different causes." 

Low-fat diary products linked to infertility

Women who consume high quantities of low-fat dairy products may increase risks of infertility.

Eating low-fat diary products may be a good way to lower cholesterol and lose weight, but a group of researchers say that it can also increase a woman’s chances of becoming infertile.

Failure to ovulate is a common cause of infertility, and women who eat lots of low-fat dairy products have been found to have an 85 percent higher risk of ovulatory infertility, according to a Harvard-affiliated study.

According to the study, this condition strikingly high in women who consumed two or more daily servings of low-fat dairy products.

Jorge Chavarro, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard University and coauthor of this study and of The Fertility Diet: Groundbreaking Research Reveals Natural Ways to Boost Ovulation and Improve Your Chances of Getting Pregnant says the findings are “extremely surprising,” given that the government’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that adults consume three or more servings of low-fat dairy products daily.