Health Watch: Say 'Hello' to Coffee and 'Goodbye' to Diabetes

For those of you who've been trying to find a legitimate excuse to cut down on your coffee intake for health reasons, hold that thought for a second and thank UCLA researchers who've given all of us another reason why we shouldn't kick that caffeine habit quite yet. For quite some time now, researchers have had an inkling that coffee has had a connection with preventing type 2 diabetes. And in fact they were right. What researchers have found is that caffeine aficionados were least likely to develop type 2 diabetes, as the java works as a protective agent by increasing the plasma levels of sex-hormone-binding globulin (SHGB). The SHGB protein regulates the biological activity of the body's sex hormones, testosterone and estrogen which has been long been thought to play a role in the development of type 2 diabetes. As Science Daily reported, after Atsushi Goto, UCLA doctoral student in epidemiology, and Dr. Simin Liu, professor of epidemiology and medicine with joint appointments at the UCLA School of Public Health and the David Geffen School, tested 359 new diabetes cases with 359 said to be healthy controls out of 40,000 women varying in both age and race, "they found women who drank four cups of caffeinated coffee each day had significantly higher levels of SHBG than did non-drinkers and were 56 percent less likely to develop diabetes than were non-drinkers," explained Mark Wheeler of the UC Newsroom. "Early studies have consistently shown that an "inverse association" exists between coffee consumption and risk for type 2 diabetes," Liu said. "That is the greater the consumption the lesser the risk of diabetes. It was thought that coffee may improve the body's tolerance to glucose by increasing metabolism or improving its tolerance to insulin." Liu adds, they now know that SHBG is indeed critical as an early target for assessing the risk and prevention of the onset of diabetes. They now know the protein can be influenced by dietary factors like coffee intake in affecting diabetes risk. The lower the levels of SHBG, the greater the risk beyond any known diabetes factor. But diabetes prevention is only the beginning of the health benefits coffee may give us. In a number of other studies, one in particular published in the Wall Street Journal and referenced by Top News, coffee has been found to possess antimicrobial agents that aid in the prevention of tooth decay. Other studies have said it decreases the risk of cardiovascular diseases in women by no less than 24 percent, protects men from Parkinson's disease while also increasing their metabolism and may also help the condition of short-term memory loss and is a helpful factor in aiding headaches. So before you back away from that latte, just remember that one cup of espresso can provide you with loads of health benefits, so you might as well ask your barista for that double shot.