Coffee talk: Drinking decaf may lower diabetes risk

Having a cup of coffee with your morning paper? It might just prevent diabetes. Drinking several cups of decaf a day -- along with skirting insomnia and jitters -- may lower a person's risk for developing type 2 diabetes, according to a new study.

The research, published this month in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found that postmenopausal women who daily drank more than six cups of coffee -- particularly decaffeinated coffee -- had a 33 percent lower risk of developing diabetes than women who didn't drink coffee at all.

Researchers from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health analyzed coffee intake and diabetes risk in more than 28,000 women enrolled in the Iowa Women's Health Study. At the start of the 11-year study period, none of the women had heart disease or diabetes, but during the follow-up, 1,418 reported being diagnosed with diabetes.

At Saint Francis Medical Center in Cape Girardeau, diabetes health professional Rosie Danker said it's important for people to remember that this is just one study and that rushing out to buy coffee in bulk may not be the best course of action.

Danker said multiple studies would be needed before she recommended coffee as preventative measure for diabetes.

No one at Southeast Missouri Hospital was available for comment.

Mark Pereira, an associate professor at Minnesota who led the study, said the risk reduction from drinking coffee is independent of other risk factors, such as obesity and physical activity. "There appears to be great potential for coffee to help reduce the risk of diabetes. Identifying the mechanism responsible for this should definitely be the subject of further research," Pereira said.

Study results

About half the women drank one to three cups of coffee a day, about 3,000 said they drank none and about 2,900 said they drank more than six cups. For this group, those who daily drank any type of coffee were 22 percent less likely to be diagnosed with the most common form of diabetes, with the risk reduction rising to 33 percent among the heaviest coffee drinkers.

Overall, caffeine intake didn't seem to affect the risk for diabetes. So researchers figured that another component -- one that's not removed along with the caffeine -- must be involved. One candidate was magnesium, which is known to influence the metabolism of carbohydrates, but the study found no link between the mineral and diabetes risk.

Coffee: Good for you?

There are other potential health benefits for coffee drinkers as well.

According to Harvard Medical School, coffee may reduce the risk of developing gallstones, discourage the development of colon cancer, improve cognitive function, reduce the risk of liver damage and reduce the risk of Parkinson's disease. Coffee has also been shown to improve endurance performance in long-duration activities.

Other minerals and nutrients found in coffee beans, including compounds known as polyphenols -- which help the body process carbohydrates and antioxidants that may protect cells in the insulin-producing pancreas -- may contribute to the beneficial effects and should be examined in further studies, the researchers said.

More than 20 million Americans have diabetes, with at least 6 million of those cases undiagnosed.

Scripps Howard News Service and staff writer Callie Clark Miller contributed to this report.