Even MORE Reason to Drink Your Coffee

Researchers in Iowa recently conducted a study of 28,812 post-menopausal women to assess the impact of coffee drinking on their risk of developing diabetes (Arch Intern Med. 2006;166:1311-1316).

The study followed these women, aged 55 to 69, for eleven years via mailed questionnaire and telephone interview. Along with their regular and decaffeinated coffee intake, the women were queried about their height, weight, exercise level, whether they smoked and how much, and were administered detailed food frequency questionnaires in the baseline and four follow-up surveys.

As other studies have shown, the more coffee the women drank, the lower their risk of developing diabetes: those who drank more than six cups per day reduced their risk by 34%! The surprising result, however, was that when the researchers differentiated between caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee, those women who drank more than 6 cups of decaffeinated coffee per day reduced their risk even further—by 42%.

What's especially interesting about this study is that these women's risks were reduced despite the fact that women who drank more coffee tended to drink more alcohol, smoke more, exercise less, and get more high-fat dairy foods and less fiber in their diet than those who drank less coffee.

What this means for you

Clearly there's something in coffee that's protecting people from diabetes, and it's also clear that it's not the caffeine. Researchers speculate that it's the antioxidants in the coffee. (Indeed, coffee is the single largest source of antioxidants in the Western diet.) So go ahead—drink your coffee.

First posted: July 5, 2006