Java's Daily Benefits

Submitted by ub on

There’s a good reason to start the day with a cup of coffee, those who do appear to live longer than others.

Drinking coffee is associated with a lower risk of death due to heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and respiratory and kidney disease for African-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Latinos, and whites.

People who drink a cup of coffee a day are 12 percent less likely to die compared to those who don’t drink coffee. This association is even stronger for those who drink two to three cups a day 18 percent reduced the chance of death.

Lower mortality was present regardless of whether people drank regular or decaffeinated coffee, suggesting the association is not tied to caffeine, said V. Wendy Setiawan, senior author of the study and an associate professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

The study was just published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, used data from the Multiethnic Cohort Study, a collaborative effort between the University of Hawaii Cancer Center and the Keck School of Medicine.
Association of Coffee Consumption With Mortality Among Nonwhite Populations | Annals of Internal Medicine | American College of Physicians http://annals.org/aim/article/2643433/association-coffee-consumption-to…

The ongoing Multiethnic Cohort Study has more than 215,000 participants and bills itself as the most ethnically diverse study examining lifestyle risk factors that may lead to cancer.

Previous research by USC and others have indicated that drinking coffee is associated with reduced risk of several types of cancer, diabetes, liver disease, Parkinson’s disease, Type 2 diabetes and other chronic diseases.

Researchers from the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center have found that drinking coffee lowers the risk of colorectal cancer.

But drinking piping hot coffee or beverages probably causes cancer in the esophagus, according to a World Health Organization panel of scientists that included Mariana Stern from the Keck School of Medicine.

In some respects, coffee is regaining its honor for wellness benefits. After 25 years of labeling coffee, a carcinogen linked to bladder cancer, the World Health Organization last year announced that drinking coffee reduces the risk for liver and uterine cancer.

Setiawan and her colleagues examined the data of 185,855 African-Americans 17 percent, Native Hawaiians 7 percent, Japanese-Americans (29 percent), Latinos 22 percent and whites 25 percent ages 45 to 75 at recruitment. Participants answered questionnaires about diet, lifestyle, and family and personal medical history.

They reported their coffee drinking habits when they entered the study and updated them about every five years, checking one of nine boxes that ranged from “never or hardly ever” to “4 or more cups daily.” They also reported whether they drank caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee. The average follow-up period was 16 years.

Sixteen percent of participants reported that they did not drink coffee, 31 percent drank one cup per day, 25 percent drank two to three cups per day and 7 percent drank four or more cups per day. The remaining 21 percent had irregular coffee consumption habits.

Over the course of the study, 58,397 participants about 31 percent died. Cardiovascular disease 36 percent and cancer 31 percent were the leading killers.

The data was adjusted for age, sex, ethnicity, smoking habits, education, preexisting disease, vigorous physical exercise, and alcohol consumption.

Setiawan’s previous research found that coffee reduces the risk of liver cancer and chronic liver disease. She is currently examining how coffee is associated with the risk of developing specific cancers.

Researchers from the University of Hawaii Cancer Center and the National Cancer Institute contributed to this study. The study used data from the Multiethnic Cohort Study, which is supported by a $19,008,359 grant from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health.

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