Coffee, the favorite drink of the West, has long been known to have numerous beneficial effects on health. In this line, a study recently published in the scientific environment Clinical Nutrition has found what to take a cup of coffee every day can significantly reduce the risk of type II diabetes.
One of the strongest points of this research is that it addresses not only the statistical relationship between coffee consumption and type II diabetes (a parameter susceptible to being distorted by other variables) but also the mechanisms that may be behind of the association between the two phenomena.
An anti-inflammatory drink
The authors use data extracted from the prospective study UK Biobank and from the study Rotterdam, with a combined cohort of more than 150,000 patients, in whom they observed that indeed the consumption of a cup of coffee every day was associated with a 4-6% lower risk of type 2 diabetes. Not only that, but regular use of the drink also predicted lower insulin resistance, lower C-reactive protein (a common indicator of inflammation levels), lower leptin levels (a hormone that regulates food intake). of food and increased concentrations of adiponectin (a hormone that regulates glucose and lipid metabolism).
These benefits, while already significant with just a cup of coffee each day, increased with each additional serving, within the evaluated range (between 0 and 6 daily cups). The benefits in relation to type II diabetes were strongest for espresso or filtered coffee, and for non-smokers.
Precisely, the relationship between coffee consumption and all these parameters are what led the authors to hypothesize that the way in which coffee consumption could mediate type II diabetes is related to the inflammatory nature of this disease. Given that many of them are known biomarkers of inflammatory levels in the body, it appears that coffee may have anti-inflammatory effects, which is consistent with existing scientific evidence.
References
Carolina Ochoa-Rosales, Niels van der Schaft, Kim VE Braun, Frederick K. Ho, Fanny Petermann-Rocha, Fariba Ahmadizar, Maryam Kavousi, Jill P. Pell, M. Arfan Ikram, Carlos A. Celis-Morales, Trudy Voortman. C-reactive protein partially mediates the inverse association between coffee consumption and risk of type 2 diabetes: The UK Biobank and the Rotterdam study cohorts. Clinical Nutrition (2023). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clnu.2023.02.024.