Friday, November 08, 2002


endless coffee health confusion. . .

sometimes these studies can be confusing no? a new dutch study suggests that drinking a large amount of coffee per day could prevent diabetes, now an epidemic in our overweight western world.

the kicker is that they are not sure what in the coffee has this effect. (i'm going out on a limb here and voting for the chlorogenic acid, which is one of those groovy anti-oxidant polyphenols, and seems to inhibit cancer in hamsters, but hey, what do i know?) it's not the caffeine, because the effect was seen in decaf drinkers as well. as readers of illy's book on coffee chemistry know, coffee contains hundreds of interesting phytochemicals, minerals, and micro-nutrients, so they could be searching for a while to find the useful substance.

the dutch study showed a 50% risk-reduction for those who drank 7 cups of coffee a day. i think that's too much for most people to drink; here at bccy the recommendation is no more than 3 cups a day. (so drink the best and freshest you can get your hands on!) with luck, that would translate into a 20% risk-reduction, but of course i can't prove that. still, it would be significant.

another interesting thing about this study is that for people who already have diabetes, coffee can slightly impair the body's insulin system. strange, hmm? if you don't have diabetes, coffee will help you prevent it; if you do have it, full-caf coffee may make it slightly worse. but if you put milk in your coffee, then your risk seems to go down again. very confusing! well, all the studies are provisional. . .

but what we can say without a doubt is that yoga is excellent for the health. since lack of exercise is also a major factor in diabetes, i can definitely state that going to a challenging vinyasa class will help. so go to class tomorrow. . . i certainly will!

posted by fortune | 5:57 PM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 0 comments