Thaindian News

June 23, 2010 (Pen Men at Work): Good news for the coffee lovers, now, you have more reason to have an extra cup of coffee! The researchers have found that the intake of the caffeinated coffee can cut out the risk of various types of cancer.

The study has revealed that coffee helps to protect against the oral cancer but should be taken in limited amounts as it could affect the heart rate and blood pressure.

Many confusing and contradictory results came up while studying the links between coffee and cancer. It is confusing since drinking of coffee leads to many other lifestyle changes that increases cancer risk, such as smoking and alcohol.

The researchers conducted an analysis of the data to find out the relation between coffee consumption and cancer. They analyzed the data out of the nine case-control studies of head and neck cancers. The data included 5,139 cancer patients and 9,028 healthy people. The researchers analyzed their smoking, dietary and alcohol habits.

It was found that the regular coffee drinking (4 cups of coffee a day) decreased the risk of developing mouth and throat cancer by 40 percent than those who did not drink coffee. The antioxidants present in coffee have this protective effect.

Again, some other studies showed lower rates of kidney and ovarian cancer in the coffee drinking people but it showed no effect on colon cancer.

The recent study showed that the risk of head and neck cancers was lowered by 12 percent in coffee drinkers compared with the non-drinkers.

The researchers concluded that more studies were required before we can promote coffee as a means of protecting ourselves from cancer. However, they added that coffee contains more than a thousand chemicals apart from caffeine. These are compounds like cafestol and kahweol, which may be defensive against the carcinogens that normally damage our genes.