Coffee Drinking may lower diabetes risk

Coffee drinking may lower diabetes risk
Tue Jun 27, 12:32 AM ET
Reuters

Consumption of coffee, particularly the decaffeinated variety, is
associated with a reduced risk of diabetes, according to a report in
the Archives of Internal Medicine.

indoarsman...

My gut feeling is that they're on the right track, but they're missing
an important point. To be most effective, the coffee should be taken
immediately after a large piece of chocolate cake.

The study is not the first to document this association. However, in
previous studies it was unclear if the relationship was true among
people of different ages and body weights and if the caffeine component
was the ingredient primarily responsible for the anti-diabetes effect.

Dr. Mark A. Pereira, from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis,
and colleagues addressed these uncertainties by analyzing data from
28,812 women enrolled in the Iowa Women's Health Study, which ran from
1986 to 1997. All of the women were free from diabetes and heart
disease when the study began.

The subjects were divided into groups based on the amount of coffee
they drank: none, less than 1 cup, 1 to 3 cups, 4 to 5 cups, or 6 or
more cups per day. During follow-up, 1,418 of the women were diagnosed
with diabetes.

Women who drank the most coffee were 22 percent less likely to develop
diabetes than the group that drank no coffee, the report indicates.
Further analysis showed that this association, which remained
relatively stable by age and body weight groups, was largely accounted
for by intake of decaffeinated coffee rather than regular coffee.

The coffee ingredients responsible for the possible protective effect
remain unclear. Two coffee components, magnesium and phytate, did not
account for the association seen. Caffeine intake from all sources,
including soft drinks, also had no bearing on diabetes risk.

Although the first line of prevention for diabetes is exercise and
diet, in light of the popularity of coffee consumption and high rates
of...diabetes in older adults, these findings may carry high public
health significance."

SOURCE: Archives of Internal Medicine, June 26, 2006.

El Castor...

Dark chocolate (in moderation) has been reported to have a similar
effect.

"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of what he was never reasoned into."
Jonathan Swift