More evidence coffee, tea could prevent diabetes

Ahhh, rejoice!  Coffee & tea is a benefit afterall. 

New research suggests that coffee, tea, or decaf-no matter what your choice, may reduce your risk of diabetes, according to a new analysis of 18 studies including hundreds of thousands of people.

A very high level of research, called a meta-analysis, was released in the Archives of Internal Medicine in Dec 2009, which examined the beverage habits of coffee and tea drinkers and rate of diabetes development. 

The review, which was done in 2005, concluded that people who drank the most coffee were one-third less likely to develop diabetes than those who drank the least.  In the years since that study, the amount of research on coffee and diabetes risk apparently has more than doubled, while other studies have suggested that tea and decaf coffee may also be preventive of other diseases.

To update the evidence the research team from Australia that performed the review, analyzed 18 studies on coffee, decaf, and tea and the risk of type 2 diabetes published between 1966 and 2009, including just shy of 458,000 people in all.

That is a huge # of people, and in the realm of statistics will yield to a higher level of reliability when in comes to a cause/effect relationship. 

Type 2 diabetes, which is often tied to obesity, affects about 8 percent of the U.S. population, according to the U.S. authorities on diabetes and disease.

For every additional cup of coffee a person consumed each day, the study's authors found, a person's risk of diabetes was reduced by 7 percent. In the six studies that looked at decaf coffee, the researchers found, people who consumed more than three or four cups a day were at 36 percent lower risk of diabetes. And in seven studies that examined tea drinking and diabetes risk, people who drank more than three or four cups daily were at 18 percent lower diabetes risk.

So...somebody pour me a cup, pronto.

Researchers suggest, however that it's also not possible to say from the current evidence that heavy coffee drinkers (and tea and decaf drinkers) don't have other characteristics that might protect them against developing diabetes, they add, such as eating a healthier diet.

The fact that the effects were seen with decaf as well as coffee and tea suggest that if the effects are real, they aren't just due to caffeine, but may be related to other substances found in these beverages, the researchers say, for example magnesium, lignans (estrogen-like chemicals found in plants), or chlorogenic acids, which are antioxidants that slow the release of sugar into the blood after a meal.

Clinical trials are needed to investigate whether these beverages do indeed help prevent diabetes, the researchers say. If the benefits turn out to be real, they add, health care providers might begin advising patients at risk for diabetes not only to exercise and lose weight, but to drink more tea and coffee, too.

I'll drink to that!