Drinking Coffee can Help Reduce the Risk of Diabetes

Monday, September 13, 2010 by: Mariam Antony
Tags: diabetes, coffee, health news

(NewsTarget) Coffee lovers across the world have been disheartened by all the bad things that coffee is supposed to do. Caffeine, the major culprit in coffee, is said to cause addiction, dehydration, panic attacks and emotional fatigue. Pregnant and lactating mothers are often advised not to drink coffee at all. However all is not lost! Several studies have found that drinking coffee actually helps in fighting heart diseases, headaches, asthma and Parkinson`s disease. New studies have confirmed that coffee can also help reduce diabetes.

Fumihiko Horio and colleagues at the Department of Applied Molecular Bio-science, Nagoya University found that coffee may help in preventing diabetes. As a part of their study, they fed either water or coffee to two different groups of lab mice that were prone to diabetes. The group that was fed on coffee showed improved insulin sensitivity and they also did not develop high blood sugars. The research which was published in Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry found that coffee has beneficial effects in fatty liver and inflammatory adipocytokines, linked to a decreased risk of diabetes.

Previous studies have also indicated that drinking coffee lowers the risk of diabetes. In one study researchers looked at more than 28,000 post-menopausal women over a period of eleven years. Women who drank more than six cups a day were 22 percent less likely to develop diabetes compared to women who drank no coffee. The researchers found that the more coffee a person drank, the more beneficial effects it had in reducing diabetes. The study also found that women benefited more than men. The improved levels of insulin sensitivity were present regardless of whether decaf or regular coffee was consumed. This indicates that an ingredient other than caffeine may be responsible for the beneficial effects of coffee.

In another study published in the journal of American Diabetes Association, the relation between coffee consumption and risk of diabetes was studied in 88,259 women aged between 26 and 46 years. The objective was to assess the risk of diabetes on lower levels of consumption of coffee. The study found that the risk of diabetes decreased proportionately with the number of cups of coffee consumed. The risk decreased from 0.87 for women who drank one cup of coffee per day to 0.53 for four or more cups per day compared with nondrinkers. According to the journal, associations were similar between caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee.

Coffee is found to be especially useful in preventing type II diabetes. Type II diabetes starts with the onset of insulin resistance, a condition when the cells in the body show resistance to insulin. Insulin is the hormone which is the carrier of glucose molecules to the cells. The pancreas compensates for this by producing larger quantities of insulin. As cells become more and more insulin resistant, even the higher levels of insulin produced by the pancreas may not be sufficient. This results in a concentration of glucose molecules in the cells and is called hyperglycemia. Prolonged cases of hyperglycemia lead to diabetes.

Diabetes, a lifestyle disease, is a leading cause of death in the United Sates and in the world. Fortunately, it has been found that diabetes can be prevented to an extent by certain lifestyle and diet changes. A combination of healthy diet and regular exercise can often postpone the offset of type II diabetes in most people.

Sources:
1.http://men.webmd.com/features/coffee-new-hea...
2.http://www.scitechexplained.com/2010/03/does...
3.http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/29/...

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