
Regular And Decaf Coffee Both Lower Diabetes Risk
But the question remains, why does coffee seem to lower diabetes risk? Is it the caffeine?
Researchers from Harvard wanted to know the answer. They conducted a meta-analysis of 28 prospective studies of coffee with 1,109,272 participants. Follow-up ranged from 10 months to 20 years.
Their results published in the American Diabetes Association journal Diabetes Care confirmed that drinking coffee was inversely associated with the risk of type 2 diabetes. And it's dose dependent. The more you drink, the lower the risk. For one cup a day the relative risk dropped to 92%; for three cups a day, to 79%; and for six cups a day it dropped to 67%.
But the researchers also concluded that it doesn't matter whether your coffee is decaf or high test. You get the benefits either way. That seems to indicate that it's not caffeine's impact on insulin levels that makes the difference. Instead, the researchers suggested that other compounds in coffee like polyphenols may be responsible for coffee's health benefits.
The results are consistent with an earlier prospective cohort study from Harvard researchers that included 88,259 U.S. women from the Nurses' Health Study II. That study concluded that very high consumption was not required to realize coffee's health benefits. Their results suggested that drinking just two or more cups per day was associated with a lower diabetes risk.
Other research indicates drinking coffee kills pain, lifts mood, and sharpens the mind. Drinking decaf coffee may help reduce diabetes risk and bestow additional health benefits while avoiding some of the potential a
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