Relax girls - it's not the coffee that's raising your blood pressure!

According to the latest study, having a coffee drinking habit is not going to increase your blood pressure if you are a woman, but knocking back the colas is a different kettle of fish!

As many as 50 million people in the United States have hypertension, and that number is on the increase according to background information in an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

That could have a huge public health and financial impact.

Hypertension is a major risk factor for coronary heart disease, stroke, and congestive heart failure.

Previous studies have suggested a possible connection between caffeine intake and the risk of hypertension, and short-term studies have demonstrated that caffeine intake acutely increases blood pressure, but over time, weakening of this effect does occur.

Until now no long-term studies of the effect of caffeine intake and the risk of developing hypertension exist.

But in this latest study by Wolfgang C. Winkelmayer, M.D., Sc.D., of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, data from the Nurses’ Health Studies, taken over 12 years, was examined, to assess the effect of the consumption of certain caffeine-containing beverages on hypertension in women.

The team found that it was not the caffeine in coffee which was responsible for raising blood pressure but some other compound contained in soda-type soft drinks.

The study is published in the November 9 issue of JAMA.