Article courtesy of the Telegraph via “The Rundown”
Drinking more coffee may slightly reduce your risk of diabetes, and people who drink three or more cups appear to be at the lowest risk of all, an American study has suggested.
Researchers at Harvard University’s School of Public Health analyzed data on more than 120,000 people’s coffee consumption over several years. They found that those who increased their intake by more than a cup a day over a four-year period had an 11 per cent lower chance of developing diabetes in the following years.
Those who had consistently higher coffee consumption – of three or more cups a day – had a risk which was 37 per cent lower than people who consistently drank one or fewer cups a day, researchers found.
The study is the latest to suggest a possible link between coffee and reduced diabetes risk and while the researchers behind the paper said that bigger, clinical trials would be required to confirm their findings, they believe that existing evidence of coffee’s benefit is “well established”.
However, experts in the UK said that it was still not clear that coffee was directly responsible for the lower risk scores shown in the study.
Dr Shilpa Bhupathiraju, from Harvard School of Public Health’s department of nutrition, who co-led the study, said that while exercise and maintaining a healthy diet were by far the best ways to cut the risk of type 2 diabetes, there were also “biologically plausible” theories as to why coffee might also help.
“Coffee has a lot of bio-active compounds, including chlorogenic acid, which we know improves glucose metabolism when tested in animals,” she said. “Coffee is also a rich source of magnesium, which is known to be associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes. The biological plausibility is actually very strong.”