Some readers of this blog may also have been made aware of some news earlier this year that habitual coffee drinking may be beneficial in terms of decrease in the rates of prostate cancer.
I thought I would have a look at the paper that provoked this press interest. The way in which medical research is published in by the popular press does not always represent the true conclusions that a paper has presented.
The study entitled “Coffee consumption and prostate cancer risk and progression in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study” was published in June in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute of America. It reported on a 20 year, prospective study of the coffee drinking habits of nearly 48,000, male, health care professionals. In these, it identified just over 5,000 with prostate cancer during the period of follow-up and 642 of these with lethal (defined as fatal or spreading to other parts of the body) cancer.
The results showed an inverse relationship between the amount of coffee drunk per day and the rate of prostate cancer. In effect, the more coffee you drink, the less likely you are to get prostate cancer. This relationship only reached statistical significance in the decrease rates of lethal prostate cancer in men who drink more than 6 cups of coffee a day. The study also remarks that this relationship was independent of whether the coffee was caffeinated or not.
This is not the first time that the health effects of coffee have been studied. Whilst there have been many conflicting and contradictory reports over the years, the vast majority of recent scientific activity shows many very positive health benefits associated with drinking coffee. In addition to coffee’s well-known ability to increase performance on mental and physical tasks, coffee drinking has also been strongly linked to lowering the risk of colorectal and liver cancers, asthma, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.
Roasted coffee is a complex blend of aromatic and volatile chemical compounds. Many of these are shown to have significant anti-oxidant properties. Anti-oxidants are molecules that are probably important in mopping up free radicals in the body. These are “rogue” molecules that are presumed to be able to damage DNA and other molecules in the body, potentially leading to disease. Coffee probably represents the largest source of anti-oxidants in a coffee drinker’s diet.
My conclusions… 6 cups a day it is then! Perhaps one way of administering them straight to the heart of the problem is as demonstrated by Dr Alan Statham in the link below.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Clik here to view.
