A recent study’s results produced coffee’s hidden benefit, its capacity to reduce the risk of getting prostate cancer. Coffee’s side effects have always been discussed, but its benefits have never been taken into consideration. Health news describes how “drinking six or more cups of coffee per day can lower a man’s risk of fatal prostate cancer by up to 60%.”

Kathryn Wilson, a research fellow in epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health discusses how coffee’s varieties of biological effects are relevant for prostate cancer. She discusses how “its an important source of antioxidants and also has positive effects on glucose metabolism and insulin levels, and its thought that insulin plays a role in the progression of prostate cancer,” according to Health News.

A study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute involved 48,000 men. Kathryn Wilson and her colleagues “tracked the relationships between nutritional factors and cancer, heart disease, and other health conditions”. Between the years 1986 and 2006, every four years the participants reported how much coffee they drank per day as part of diet questionnaires. Health News discusses how in the follow-up period around “5,035 men were diagnosed with prostate cancer.” The cancer was considered lethal in 642 cases, the men either died of the disease or the tumors spread a good amount.

The consumption of coffee was known to lower the risk of all prostate cancers only slightly, and the change in the risk was pronounced for lethal cancer. Men who drank at least six cups of coffee a day had a 60% lower risk, whereas the ones who drank one to three cups a day had a 30% lower risk.

Health News describes how coffee consumption has been linked to a lower risk of “type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, and liver cancer, among other conditions.”

Women were known to lower their risk of developing an aggressive type of breast cancer by drinking at least five cups of coffee a day.

Regardless of the kind of coffee men drank, decaf or caffeinated, a decreased risk of cancer was still seen, which briefs on a property in coffee other than caffeine that might be helping this.

Shiuan Chen, PhD, director of tumor cell biology at the City of Hope Cancer Center in Duarte, California mentions how the evidence isn’t justifying enough for doctors to recommend the increase in coffee intake. He says how, “I don’t think it’s any reason for changing habits in the immediate moment.”

Proven by other questionnaires, coffee consumption does not prove that it directly prevents aggressive prostate cancer. Health news proves that it “shows only an association, although it is a relatively strong one, since the researchers were able to take into account detailed information on the men’s overall diets and other factors.” Family history of prostate cancer, smoking, obesity and physical activity can be taken into account.

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About the author

Jineta Raval

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