New Research Touts Benefits Of Coffee In Combating Diabetes, Obesity

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Drinking three to four cups of coffee per day has been associated with an approximately 25 percent reduction in a person’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes, the Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee (ISIC) claims in the latest edition of its Coffee and Health Diabetes Report.
The study, released to coincide with World Diabetes Day on Friday, highlights some of the most recent research in coffee consumption and its impact on the risk of contracting type 2 diabetes. Over 380 million people worldwide suffer from the condition, which according to ISIC carries with it an economic burden of more than $500 billion.
The first Coffee and Health Diabetes Report was produced following the World Congress on Prevention of Diabetes in 2012. Since then, it has been updated to include recently published studies that add to the body of research in the field – including the aforementioned study, which used epidemiological evidence that three to four cups of the caffeinated beverage per day reduced a person’s risk of the disease more than drinking two or less.
In addition, the report touts research suggesting that there was an inverse or favorable association in which each additional cup of coffee consumed reduced a person’s relative risk of type 2 diabetes by seven to eight percent, although researchers note that it is unlikely this effect is due to the caffeine contained in the beverage.
Rather, a recent meta-analysis suggested that even drinking decaffeinated coffee was associated with the effect, and another paper suggested that the type of coffee could also impact the strength of this association. Filtered coffee, the ISIC noted, appears to exhibit a greater protective effect than boiled coffee, and decaffeinated coffee was found to exhibit a greater protective effect than caffeinated coffee, the new report claims.
The report’s release comes just a few days after Yongjie Ma, a postdoctoral research associate from the University of Georgia’s College of Pharmacy, and his colleagues announced that they had located a chemical compound commonly found in coffee which could help prevent some of the harmful effects of obesity in laboratory tests conducted on mice.
In their study, published recently in the journal Pharmaceutical Research, the study authors found that injecting rodents a chemical compound commonly found in coffee, chlorogenic acid (CGA), helped prevent weight gain and maintain normal blood sugar levels and healthy liver composition – even when those mice were fed a high-fat diet for a period of 15 weeks.
“Previous studies have shown that coffee consumption may lower the risk for chronic diseases like Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease,” said Ma, who was the study’s lead author and who works in the laboratory of UGA professor Dexi Liu in the department of pharmaceutical and biomedical sciences. “Our study expands on this research by looking at the benefits associated with this specific compound, which is found in great abundance in coffee, but also in other fruits and vegetables like apples, pears, tomatoes and blueberries.”
“CGA is a powerful antioxidant that reduces inflammation. A lot of evidence suggests that obesity-related diseases are caused by chronic inflammation, so if we can control that, we can hopefully offset some of the negative effects of excessive weight gain,” Ma added. However, the researchers are quick to emphasize that the substance is not a miracle cure-all, and that a proper diet and exercise are still the best way to reduce obesity-related health risks.
The rodents involved in the study received extremely high doses of CGA – far higher than what a person would be able to absorb through regular coffee consumption, or even by eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables. Nonetheless, the authors believe that the substance could help treat those who need extra assistance, and plan to conduct additional research to develop an improved form of CGA designed especially for human consumption.
“We’re not suggesting that people start drinking a lot of coffee to protect themselves from an unhealthy lifestyle,” said Ma, who is also involved in the university’s Obesity Initiative. “But we do think that we might be able to create a useful therapeutic using CGA that will help those at risk for obesity-related disease as they make positive lifestyle changes.”
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