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  • Our weekly medical checkup.

  • All right, if coffee is an essential part of your morning routine, we've got some great news about its possible health benefits, plus how laughter could be the best medicine when it comes to dry eyes.

  • From where we are joined by NBC News medical contributor, Dr. Kavita Patel.

  • I'm loving this because I've got dry eyes and I love me some coffee.

  • Obviously on the schedule, it's a necessity.

  • So the thing about coffee though, is I feel like there's always a new study coming out, either with something super great or conversely, something super bad.

  • You always hear about people saying, I'm cutting out coffee as if it's like cutting out sugar or something.

  • So what did this new study from Chinese researchers tell us?

  • All right, so these are researchers who looked at hundreds of thousands of people.

  • These are people who drink nothing, no tea, no coffee.

  • People who drink moderate amounts of tea or coffee.

  • And what's a moderate amount?

  • About two to three cups, 200 to 300 milligrams a day.

  • And then people who drink more than that.

  • And they looked at them over 12 years, did surveys at the beginning, at the end, and tried to see what association, if any, they had with cardiometabolic diseases.

  • That's things like type two diabetes, coronary artery disease, high blood pressure, things that we do worry about.

  • And what they found, might bring some coffee lovers like us, some great news, that they found a reduction of that kind of risk of getting cardiometabolic diseases if you had about a moderate amount of caffeine.

  • So two to three cups a day.

  • And that they saw an even higher reduction if you were a pure coffee drinker, but still a reduction even if you were a tea or kind of a mixed tea and coffee drinker.

  • So all in all, good news for coffee drinkers, but there had been some associations of risk, at higher levels of caffeine.

  • That's why I think you're hearing these messages, like cut this, cut that, because for each person, an amount of coffee might be just a little different.

  • So the doctor's orders here, Savannah, are to really remember that caffeine itself is a drug.

  • That's why we talk about kind of making sure that it fits with other conditions you have, talking to your health professionals, if you feel like you don't respond well.

  • And I think that's why you can just think of caffeine as anything else, like sugar, all of these things that can result in higher or even maybe lower risk, depending on how much you have.

  • And I think moderation can be key with caffeine.

Our weekly medical checkup.

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