The research, which was published in Diabetologia, was the first to find that actually increasing (not just consumption in general) your coffee consumption by 1.5 cups/day (or around 360ml) over a four-year period can decrease your risk of type 2 diabetes by 11%! The authors studied three long-term databases that tracked individual's lifestyle, diet and physical/medical conditions. From this data (over 7,200 cases of type 2 diabetes within the data), they found that participants who increased their consumption of coffee by 1.69 cups/day lowered their risk of type 2 diabetes, while participants who decreased their consumption by at least one cup/day actually had a greater risk of type 2 diabetes, by as much as 17%!
The authors hypothesized that this increased risk of type 2 diabetes associated with decreased coffee consumption could be due to true risk or could be due to people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes decreasing their consumption after diagnosis. The authors did note, "In these 3 large prospective cohorts with more than 1.6 million person-years of follow-up, we observed that increasing coffee, but not tea, intake over a 4-year period was associated with a lower type 2 diabetes risk in the next 4 years. Decreasing coffee intake was associated with a higher type 2 diabetes risk. These changes in risk were observed for caffeinated, but not decaffeinated coffee, and were independent of initial coffee consumption and 4-year changes in other dietary and lifestyle factors."
Other Great Benefits of Increased Coffee Consumption
Another great benefit of coffee is that it is loaded with antioxidants, and in fact a 2005 study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that coffee is American's number one source of antioxidants. The study found that one cup of coffee beats a serving of oranges or even blueberries in terms of their antioxidant content! Antioxidants can play a role in preventing inflammation, which can be associated with heart disease or a number of other diseases.
Likewise, it was found by Harvard Medical School research that the regular consumption of coffee can reduce the risk of prostate cancer! The long-term study found that men who drank at least 1-3 cups of coffee a day compared to men who never drank it had a 20% lower risk of prostate cancer! Likewise, those who drank 4-5 cups had a 25% lower risk of prostate cancer compared to those who never drank coffee!
Increasing your coffee consumption (to a certain extent; all things in moderation) can help reduce your risk of type 2 diabetes as well as provide you with a healthy dose of powerful antioxidants! So pour yourself another cup!
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