A visitor checks coffee beans at the 'International Coffee
Festival 2007' in the southern Indian city of Bangalore February 24, 2007.
Drinking coffee can help ward off type 2 diabetes and may even help
prevent certain cancers, according to panelists discussing the benefits --
and risks -- of the beverage at a scientific meeting.
[Reuters]
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NEW YORK - Drinking coffee can help ward off type 2 diabetes and may even
help prevent certain cancers, according to panelists discussing the benefits --
and risks -- of the beverage at a scientific meeting.
"We're coming from a situation where coffee had a very negative health
image," Dr. Rob van Dam of the Harvard School of Public Health, who has
conducted studies on coffee consumption and diabetes, told Reuters Health.
Nevertheless, he added, "it's not like we're promoting coffee as the new health
food and asking people who don't like coffee to drink coffee for their health."
Van Dam participated in a "controversy session" on coffee at the Experimental
Biology 2007 meeting underway in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Lenore Arab of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA also took
part, presenting results of a review of nearly 400 studies investigating coffee
consumption and cancer risk.
There's evidence, Arab noted, that the beverage may protect against certain
types of colon cancer, as well as rectal and liver cancer, possibly by reducing
the amount of cholesterol, bile acid and natural sterol secretion in the colon,
speeding up the passage of stool through the colon (and thus cutting exposure of
the lining of the intestine to potential carcinogens in food), and via other
mechanisms as well.
However, Arab did find evidence that coffee may increase the risk of leukemia
and stomach cancer, with the case for leukemia being strongest.
The findings suggest that people who may be vulnerable to these risks -- for
example pregnant women and children -- should limit coffee consumption, van Dam
noted in an interview.
He and his colleagues are now conducting a clinical trial to get a clearer
picture of the diabetes-preventing effects of coffee, which were first reported
in 2002. Since then, he noted, there have been more than 20 studies on the
topic.
Van Dam and his team are also looking for which of the "hundreds to
thousands" of components of coffee might be responsible for these effects. It's
probably not caffeine, he noted, given that decaf and caffeinated coffee have
similar effects on reducing diabetes risk.
His top candidate, van Dam says, is chlorogenic acid, an antioxidant that
slows the absorption of glucose in the intestines.