Coffee May Help Protect Your Muscles as You Age, Study Shows

New research has found that drinking coffee may help you avoid losing muscle mass as you age.

The new study, published in Frontiers in Nutrition, suggests that drinking coffee may help prevent sarcopenia, a musculoskeletal disease that compromises strength, muscle mass, and performance in the process of aging.

People who drank coffee every day had an 11%-13% higher muscle mass, while decaffeinated coffee showed no significant association.

However, this association didn’t hold true for everyone in the study. The relationship between coffee consumption and higher muscle mass “disappeared” in people with a body mass index (BMI) over 30, said, Luke Kim, MD, MEd, a geriatrician at Cleveland Clinic who was unaffiliated with the study.

For the study, researchers relied on health data from over 8,300 U.S. adults collected from 2011 to 2018. The average age of the participants was about 40, and slightly over half were female.

The study authors assessed participants’ muscle mass by evaluating bone density scans, and they evaluated participants’ coffee intake based on a self-reporting questionnaire. These surveys were conducted twice during the study.

Why May Coffee Protect Muscle Mass?

The study didn't explain why coffee consumption may be associated with higher muscle mass, said Dana Hunnes, PhD, MPH, RD, clinical inpatient dietitian at UCLA Health.

However, the anti-inflammatory properties of caffeine could be part of the reason.

“Coffee contains multiple anti-inflammatory compounds in it and it is known that inflammation is associated with decreased muscle mass,” Hunnes told Verywell.

If drinking coffee can lower inflammation in the body, it can also lower "catabolic pathways"—which happen when the body "eats its own muscle," Hunnes said.

Coffee may also help maintain autophagy, a process that helps "recycle" aging cells, said Heidi Skolnik, MS, CDN, FACSM, a sports nutritionist and exercise physiologist at the Women’s Sports Medicine Center at the Hospital for Special Surgery.

Should You Drink Coffee Consistently?

Drinking coffee alone cannot prevent sarcopenia, Hunnes said. It’s also unclear how much coffee you need to drink to see the potential protective benefits.

"This study seemed to indicate that any caffeinated coffee intake offered benefits over zero coffee intake, with more benefit with more coffee,” Hunnes added.

She added that it's likely that people have to drink coffee for years to see real health benefits. "However, it’s probably never too late to start," she said.

The study was also limited in a couple of crucial ways. Namely, coffee consumption was recorded through a survey—which required participants to recall how much coffee they had consumed—which is subject to recall bias. Recall bias occurs when people don’t accurately remember the details of an experience, such as exactly how much coffee they had over a given period, and it can affect the results of a study.

While coffee may not be the miracle solution to muscle mass loss, it’s important to prioritize exercise and a healthy diet as you age since these are known to help protect the musculoskeletal system.

“It’s important to maintain muscle mass with age because muscle allows us to maintain balance, stay mobile and active, [and] it helps us digest and absorb our food,” Hunnes said.