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Almost any way you pour it, java may help fight heart disease, diabetes  - even cancer

“If it weren’t for the coffee,” David Letterman once quipped, “I’d have no identifiable personality whatsoever.” Those of us who start the day clutching a cup of coffee can relate. But we worry, Is coffee bad for us? Relax. Its bad reputation is being rehabilitatd thanks to many large-scale studies.

Consider the Honolulu Heart Programme. In the 1960s, doctors wondered if coffee increased heart attack risk, so they asked 8000 Japanese – American men how much they drank Forty yars later, they found no link. But those who had up to six cups a day were five times less likely to develop Parkinson’s disease, says researcher Webster Ross, a neurologist. Caffeine appears to protect brain cells from the damage that leads to Parkinson’s.

Offering more grounds for coffee lovers to rejoice, in 2003 Harvard University researchers found that people who imbibed four to five cups daily cut their risk of type 2 diabetes by 30 per cent. And last autumn, scientists at Germany’s University of Munster identified a compound in coffee that appears to protect against colon cancer.

Worried java will give you the jitters? Drink more than you’re used to and it might. “But show that the caffeine in a cup of coffee can increase alertness and improve performance on tests of mental function,” says Cardiff University, Wales, psychologist Andrew Smith.

For years, experts wondered if caffeine affected blood pressure. So Johns Hopkins University doctors tracked 1000 former medical students for over 30 years and found that coffee drinkers had slightly higher blood pressure, but weren’t at greater risk of developing hypertension.

Until we know more, experts concur: Drinking up to three cups a day is safe. “The latest evidence shows there’s less to worry about than we once thought, and perhaps some unexpected benefits,” says Ross, who enjoys a couple of cups a day, black and worry-free.