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If you're on a health kick you may not have to give up your coffee habit, according to new research into the links between coffee, disease and death.

"Coffee drinkers can be reassured that coffee does not increase their risk of death," says Esther Lopez-Garcia, an epidemiologist at the University of Madrid, who worked on the research at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

There may even be a modest benefit to a Tim Hortons fix, especially for women. The risk of mortality due to all causes was 26 per cent lower for women who consumed four to five cups a day than for those who didn't drink coffee. Women who drank two to three cups of coffee a day appeared to have a 17-per-cent lower risk.

The positive effects among women were attributed to fewer deaths from heart disease. The results hold true for both regular and decaffeinated coffee.

Among men, the apparent benefits were not large enough to be deemed statistically significant.

In terms of cancer risk, there was no greater or lower risk of death among coffee drinkers.

Using two large U.S. surveys of health professionals, the study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, followed about 43,000 men for 18 years and about 86,000 women for 24 years. None of the participants had a history of cardiovascular disease or cancer when they started, but many died of those diseases and other causes during the course of the study.

At first glance, the overall numbers seem to suggest coffee consumption is associated with a higher risk of death from all causes. But when the researchers adjusted for behaviours that are more probable in frequent coffee drinkers than in non-drinkers - including smoking, alcohol consumption and lack of exercise - coffee was exonerated from causing ill effects.

Dr. Lopez-Garcia's study is the latest to rehabilitate a long-time nutritional bad boy. "It's also happened with other foods and nutrients, for example with [certain] fats," she says. "They used to be bad; now it has been discovered they are not so bad, even can be good for our health."

Still, Dr. Lopez-Garcia says she and her colleagues do not recommend picking up a coffee habit for health reasons.

"We need more research," she says. "We are very cautious when we say coffee is not bad because for people with cardiovascular disease, hypertension and insomnia, clearly it's not a good idea to start drinking coffee."

And while it appears that more cups of coffee offer more benefits, Dr. Lopez-Garcia cautions that "it doesn't mean less coffee is not protective or more coffee is more protective," because she may have had more study subjects who drank a lot of coffee.

Caffeine is the ingredient most associated with coffee, but Dr. Lopez-Garcia is looking at other compounds to explain its positive effects. Coffee's antioxidants are thought to have anti-inflammatory properties and to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. Magnesium has been shown to increase insulin sensitivity and reduce the risk of Type 2 diabetes. These and other compounds are believed to counteract the potential harmful effects of caffeine.

Dr. Lopez-Garcia, who is holding steady at her three-cups-a-day habit, will look next at the link between coffee-drinking and risk of stroke.