WORLD / Health
Drinking coffee can ward off diabetes
(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-05-02 10:37
A visitor checks coffee beans at the 'International Coffee Festival 2007'
in the southern Indian city of Bangalore February 24, 2007. Drinking
coffee can help ward off type 2 diabetes and may even help prevent
certain cancers, according to panelists discussing the benefits -- and
risks -- of the beverage at a scientific meeting. [Reuters]
NEW YORK - Drinking coffee can help ward off type 2 diabetes and may even
help prevent certain cancers, according to panelists discussing the
benefits -- and risks -- of the beverage at a scientific meeting.
"We're coming from a situation where coffee had a very negative health
image," Dr. Rob van Dam of the Harvard School of Public Health, who has
conducted studies on coffee consumption and diabetes, told Reuters
Health. Nevertheless, he added, "it's not like we're promoting coffee as
the new health food and asking people who don't like coffee to drink
coffee for their health."
Van Dam participated in a "controversy session" on coffee at the
Experimental Biology 2007 meeting underway in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Lenore Arab of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA also took
part, presenting results of a review of nearly 400 studies investigating
coffee consumption and cancer risk.
There's evidence, Arab noted, that the beverage may protect against
certain types of colon cancer, as well as rectal and liver cancer,
possibly by reducing the amount of cholesterol, bile acid and natural
sterol secretion in the colon, speeding up the passage of stool through
the colon (and thus cutting exposure of the lining of the intestine to
potential carcinogens in food), and via other mechanisms as well.
However, Arab did find evidence that coffee may increase the risk of
leukemia and stomach cancer, with the case for leukemia being strongest.
The findings suggest that people who may be vulnerable to these risks --
for example pregnant women and children -- should limit coffee
consumption, van Dam noted in an interview.
He and his colleagues are now conducting a clinical trial to get a
clearer picture of the diabetes-preventing effects of coffee, which were
first reported in 2002. Since then, he noted, there have been more than
20 studies on the topic.
Van Dam and his team are also looking for which of the "hundreds to
thousands" of components of coffee might be responsible for these
effects. It's probably not caffeine, he noted, given that decaf and
caffeinated coffee have similar effects on reducing diabetes risk.
His top candidate, van Dam says, is chlorogenic acid, an antioxidant that
slows the absorption of glucose in the intestines.
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