Diabetic Benefits in Coffee and Tea: Do you consider coffee drinking to be a vice that you might need to give up in order to maintain optimum health? Maybe the vice is actually a source of improved health and diabetes avoidance? New evidence seems to support the claim.

According to EndocrineToday.com, “Drinking three to four cups of tea and regular or decaffeinated coffee per day was associated with a 5% to 10% lower risk for diabetes, according to a new meta-analysis published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.”

Research seemed to indicate it isn’t necessarily the caffeine that helps either. Those who participated in the study could drink either caffeinated or decaffeinated version of coffee and as long as they drank more than three cups a day they experienced about a 25% reduction in the likelihood of diabetes development. The results were very similar for those who enjoyed drinking tea.

The key seems to be the total volume of product consumed. The benefits decrease when fewer than 3 cups are consumed in a day.

And just so you don’t think this is a small study, consider this…

“Researchers pooled data on 18 studies during 1966 and 2009 including 457,922 participants that examined the association between coffee consumption and risk for diabetes. Six studies included 225,516 participants and assessed the association with decaffeinated coffee; seven studies included 286,701 participants and assessed the association with tea consumption.”

To add counterbalance to the report EndocrineToday.com also quoted Lars Rydén, MD PhD. “Coffee helps, but other things are even more important. Those who are overweight should reduce their body weight by 5% to 10% and include physical activity such as a brisk walk for 30 minutes a day. Then those people who are at risk of developing diabetes will reduce this risk by 40% to 50%. It is interesting to consider why a beverage like coffee has a beneficial effect. It is obviously not the caffeine, as decaffeinated coffee has the same efficiency as caffeinated coffee. Coffee may contain antioxidants but the studies have not measured the number of chemicals in the blood which is important.”

In other words an individual should not automatically conclude that the consumption of coffee or tea would be the only thing they are required to do in order to avoid the development of diabetes. We all need to be conscious of the need to make wise choices in what we eat and to add physical challenges to our daily list of things to do.

Another word of caution comes from Dr Victoria King, of Diabetes UK who told the BBC, “Without full information about what other factors may be influencing the type 2 diabetes risk of the studies’ participants – such as their physical activity levels and diet – as well as what the active ingredient in tea or coffee appears to be, we cannot be sure what, if anything, this observed effect is down to,” according to RedOrbit.com.

While more calls are made for additional studies it is theorized that perhaps the, “magnesium, lignans, or antioxidants,” in the coffee and tea may account for the reduction in diabetes risk.

While physicians are encouraging their patients to exercise, eat right and lose some weight those same doctors may also now be less inclined to restrict their patients from drinking coffee and/or tea.