Coffee addicts may have another reason to indulge in a second cup of joe in the morning. (Photo: REUTERS / Joel Boh)

Coffee addicts may have another reason to indulge in a second cup of joe in the morning.  According to a new study, published in the journal Circulation Heart Failure on Tuesday, drinking coffee can help reduce the risk of heart failure.

"While there is a commonly held belief that regular coffee consumption may be dangerous to heart health, our research suggests that the opposite may be true," Dr. Murray Mittleman, study coauthor and director of the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Research Unit at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, said in a statement.

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Researchers looked at over 140,200 people, who over the course of the study, had 6,522 heart failure events. Researchers found that two 8-ounce cups of coffee per day reduced the risk of heart failure by 11 percent.

The American Heart Association currently recommends no more than one or two cups of coffee per day, but the researchers said they hope their findings will change that.

"This is good news for coffee drinkers, of course, but it also may warrant changes to the current heart failure prevention guidelines, which suggest that coffee drinking may be risky for heart patients," Elizabeth Mostofsky, study coauthor and research fellow at Beth Israel, said in the press release. "It now appears that a couple of cups of coffee per day may actually help protect against heart failure."

But be careful -- drinking too much coffee has the reverse effect and raises your risk of heart disease, researchers said.

Researchers couldn't say why, exactly, coffee reduced the risk of heart disease, but said there is evidence that coffee may reduce the risk of diabetes and hypertension.

"Diabetes and hypertension are among the most important risk factors for heart failure, so it stands to reason that reducing one's odds of developing either of them, in turn, reduces one's chance of heart failure," Mittleman said.