A Morning Coffee – But Not an Afternoon Coffee – May Lower Risk of Heart Disease

Coffee drinkers be advised: a cup in the morning may be safer than a cup in the evening.

That’s the implication of a new study that found that people who drink coffee all day are at a higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease than those who restrict their caffeine habit to the morning.

The findings were published in the European Heart Journal.

When to stop drinking coffee

Previous research has established that moderate coffee consumption is associated with a lower risk of Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

To help determine whether the timing of coffee consumption affects these benefits, the researchers from Tulane University and the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health accessed the health and dietary data of 40,725 adults from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

Almost half of the participants (48%) were non-coffee drinkers. The next largest subgroup (36%) were considered morning-type coffee drinkers. The remaining (16%) participants were considered all-day drinkers.

Over an average follow-up period of 9.8 years, 4,295 of the participants died, 1,268 of whom from cardiovascular disease and 934 from cancer.

After analyzing the results, the researchers found that, compared with the coffee abstainers, morning coffee drinkers were 16% less likely to die of any cause and 31% less likely to die of cardiovascular disease. The all-day coffee drinkers, however, were no less likely to die from the conditions than the coffee abstainers.

None of the participant groups showed any significant differences in cancer rates.

Regarding the apparent cardiac detriments of drinking caffeine later in the day, the researchers posit that caffeine’s notorious effects on sleep quality may have, over time, reduced the health of the all-day drinkers.

“We did not investigate the mechanisms in this study, but previous studies have shown late coffee drinking may disturb sleeping, which is at least in part account for the lack of benefit of all-day coffee drinking,” Dr. Lu Qi, a professor at the Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Tulane University and lead researcher of the study, told Technology Networks.

“Prior evidence has also shown the benefits of coffee drinking on metabolism including metabolic factors related to cardiovascular health such as lowering glucose and adverse lipids. Our study indicates that drinking coffee in the morning may strengthen such benefits.”

Qi said that further, more investigative studies will be needed to confirm the hypothesis.

“Our study is the first reporting morning coffee drinking is a better pattern than whole-day drinking. The findings need validations from other studies and clinical trials, before recommending abstaining from afternoon/evening coffee drinking.”

Reference: Wang X, Ma H, Sun Q, et al. Coffee drinking timing and mortality in US adults. Europ Heart Journ. 2025. doi: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehae871