Drinking office coffee may be raising your heart attack risk; here's why

A comforting cup of coffee is all you need at work to get the creative juices flowing. But what if your favourite beverage is silently raising the risk of a heart attack? A surprising new study has found out that your workplace coffee has harmful compounds known to spike bad (LDL) cholesterol levels, compared to coffee available elsewhere. Having this coffee daily could mess with your heart health. Wonder how? Let's understand.

The reason why office coffee is unhealthier than home coffee could be due to the use of a different filtering process. Researchers from Sweden analysed coffee samples from 14 workplace machines and discovered that office coffee may have higher levels of cafestol and kahweol, the harmful compounds known to elevate LDL cholesterol, compared to coffee made at home or other places. High levels of cholesterol is a known risk factor for heart disease.

David Iggman, the lead researcher at Uppsala University said the filtering process can affect the presence of these cholesterol-elevating substances in coffee.

“Obviously, not all coffee machines manage to filter them out,” he said. “But the problem varies between different types of coffee machines, and the concentrations also showed large variations over time.”

14 machines were tested for the purpose of the study. While 11 were brewing machines, three were liquid-model machines.

Medium and dark roasts of five common brands of ground coffee were brewed and two coffee samples were taken from each machine for every two to three weeks.

What the researchers found

When it came to keeping the harmful cholesterol-raising compounds cafestol and kahweol at bay, paper filters seemed to be more effective, while the metal filters commonly found in office machines seem to let them slip by.

French press and percolated coffee prepared at home showed lower levels of these compounds, while espresso was all over the map.

It is a known fact that unfiltered coffee is more likely to raise bad cholesterol levels compared to filtered coffee, instant coffee and coffee pods.

High LDL cholesterol levels and heart disease

High LDL cholesterol can contribute to plaque buildup in your arteries which can further lead to coronary artery disease, cerebrovascular disease, peripheral artery disease, and aortic aneurysm.

The Swedish researchers noted that a reduction of 1 millimoles per liter of LDL cholesterol can lead to a 22% relative risk reduction in heart disease, which translates to a 54% decrease in risk over 40 years, the standard period of employment.

Coffee benefits

Coffee has a lot of health benefits. A study published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology found that people who consumed two to three cups of coffee every day had a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and early death than those who avoided the beverage.

According to John Hopkins Medicine, having one to two cups of coffee a day may help ward off heart failure, when a weakened heart has difficulty pumping enough blood to the body.

Drinking two or three cups of coffee in the morning have been linked to lower risk of premature death compared to no coffee at all.

However, having coffee isn't without its pitfalls as excess amounts are linked to blood pressure spikes and anxiety.

A study published in Journal of the American Heart Association, an open access, peer-reviewed journal of the American Heart Association, found that drinking two or more cups of coffee a day may double the risk of death from cardiovascular disease among people with severe high blood pressure (160/100 mm Hg or higher) but not people with high blood pressure not considered severe.