3-4 cups of coffee daily may keep diabetes at bay

Business Standard: Drinking three to four cups of coffee a day can lower your risk of developing Type-2 diabetes by nearly 25 per cent, suggests a study.

The effect of coffee consumption on Type-2 diabetes was found in both men and women.

The same protective effect applied to consuming the same amount of decaffeinated coffee, the study showed.

It was not just caffeine, but a mix of compounds including hydroxycinnamic acids notably chlorogenic acid, trigonelline, diterpenes eg cafestol and kahweol, and caffeic acid, that is said to be the reason behind the link, said Mattias Carlstrom, Associate Professor from the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden.

The results were presented at 2018 Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) in Germany.

For the study, the team reviewed 30 prospective studies, with a total of 1,185,210 participants.

Professor Kjeld Hermansen from the Aarhus University in Denmark, suggests that a number of factors may be involved including an antioxidant effect, an anti-inflammatory effect, thermogenic effects or the modulation of microbiome diversity.

Coffee also caused a cascade of other beneficial changes in the fatty liver and inflammatory adipocytokines related to a reduced diabetes risk.

In addition, coffee plays a significant role in boosting energy and attention levels, lowers risk of depression, multiple sclerosis, helps burn fat as well as prevents the onset of both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, previous research has shown. BS