
Wait, What’s the Deal with Coffee and Diabetes?
Confused about coffee and diabetes? Not sure if your morning coffee is giving you diabetes or preventing it? I’m not surprised. Historically coffee has been deplored as an unhealthy vice. But recently there’ve been some big claims the other side of the spectrum… So should you believe the hype? Can coffee actually play a role in preventing diabetes?
In the last ten or so years, there have been many studies (like this and this) looking into the relationship between coffee and diabetes. Most have found the same link: coffee drinking is associated with lower incidence of diabetes!
A recent review, which was conducted in 2013, looked at 28 studies, with over one million people – and found strong support for this link. The evidence appears to be consistent across various ethnicities and showed a dose-response relationship, that is, the more coffee people drank, the lower their relative risk of developing diabetes. One study even showed those who decreased their coffee consumption increased their risk of diabetes, while those who increased consumption, decreased their risk!
Even though this is a lot of people and many studies, it’s important to note, these were epidemiological studies. So it’s just observational evidence. Epidemi.. What? Epidemiological evidence means that people have conducted studies of large populations of people and found a pattern – or association – between people and a disease. The pattern seen in diabetes is that those who drink coffee seem to have less diabetes.
“One Triple Shot Latte to go”?
Before you go out and over-caffeinate yourse
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