Does coffee cause arrhythmia?
Many patients ask me whether coffee and other caffeine sources are beneficial or harmful to the health of their heart and circulation. Typically, these questions focus on whether caffeine causes irregular heart rhythms such as atrial fibrillation and ventricular ectopic beats. A typical patient raising such a question might have come to see me to find out what is causing their feeling of palpitations; perhaps we’ve done some tests and identified short periods of disturbed heart rhythm that explains their symptoms. The next question is inevitably, “What can I do to reduce the problem?” and sooner or later we will get onto discussing the question of caffeine and whether they should cut down or avoid it all together. This is a nuanced area of medicine and one where the “evidence” (i.e. the results of scientific studies) do not necessarily fit with patients’ lived experience. Both the individual and the scientific perspectives on the issue are valid, and both deserve some sort of explanati