Coffee Can’t Repair Your DNA, but It Does Do Something Potentially Even Better
The health benefits of drinking coffee never seem to end.
Measured by how much people spend on it, coffee is the most popular beverage in the world. In America, the amount of coffee consumed each day is greater than the combined total amount of teas, juices, and soft drinks.
Coffee, however, isn’t a guilty pleasure; it’s a superfood that reduces your risk of serious diseases like diabetes, heart disease, dementia, and Parkinson’s, as well as a host of minor afflictions, including constipation and premature ejaculation.
Most important of all, it’s now clear that coffee drinkers are less likely to get cancer than people who drink other beverages, including tea.
Just to be clear, coffee can’t repair your DNA directly, so it’s in no way a cure for cancer. But scientists now know that coffee does reduce cellular damage, including mutations to your DNA that otherwise might lead to cancer.
For example, a meta-analysis of 500 academic papers conducted at UCLA found that coffee had a “strong and consistent protective association” with liver cancer and cancer of the uterus, and a “borderline protective” association with colorectal cancer.
Similarly, a study of 43,000 Norwegians found “a positive association between coffee drinking and risk of lung cancer.” Meanwhile, the Gifu University School of Medicine found coffee had “inhibitory effects on chemical carcinogenesis.”
The effect of coffee on each individual varies according to that person’s specific DNA. Because of this, there exist some unfortunate people in this world whose systems, sadly, can’t process caffeine and must therefore avoid coffee.
On the brighter side, though, some individuals are on the other end of the scale and thus receive outsize benefits. I suspect, or at least hope, that people who write online columns for business magazines fall into this category.
Originally published on Inc.
