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Antioxidant-Rich Coffee May Have Health Benefits
A new study suggests that drinking 1 to 3 cups of coffee per day may help protect against cardiovascular disease and other illnesses with inflammation.
Reuters reports, "The findings tend to suggest that there may be some benefit to drinking modest amounts of coffee," said Dr. David R. Jacobs Jr., one of the study's investigators.
"However, a small risk reduction for cardiovascular disease death in relation to coffee drinking did diminish at higher intake levels; and cancer was not related to coffee consumption," Jacobs reported.
The findings are published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. That coffee, by inhibiting in inflammation, may protect against cardiovascular and other inflammatory diseases is not all that surprising, Jacobs told Reuters.
Scientific research has demonstrated that a serving of coffee contains up to four times as much antioxidant activity as a serving of green tea, and that each cup of coffee has a large amount of antioxidant that may be possible to prevent, postpone or limit a number of degenerative diseases, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, cataracts, and diseases of the nervous system.
"Until human studies are done, no one knows exactly how much coffee is needed to have a protective effect against colon cancer," said study leader Dr Thomas Hofmann, professor and head of the Institute for Food Chemistry at the University of Mnster in Germany. "However, our studies suggest that drinking coffee may offer some protection, especially if it's strong."
Coffee contains the antioxidant compound methylpyridinium, not found in significant amounts in other foods and beverages. Its antioxidant activity was unknown until now. Methylpyridinium is not present in raw coffee beans but is formed during the roasting process from its chemical precursor, trigonellin, which is common in raw coffee beans. It is present in both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee, and even in instant coffee.
Hofmann and his colleagues prepared a conventional coffee beverage using roasted, decaffeinated beans from Columbia. Specially prepared extracts of the brew were then exposed to laboratory preparations of human intestinal cells for three days and results were compared to cells that were not exposed to coffee. In the cell study, coffee extracts significantly boosted activity levels of phase II enzymes in a dose dependent manner, the researchers reported. In other words, the higher the quantity of coffee, the higher the increase in the activity level of the enzymes. Analysis of the extract showed that the most active anticancer compound was methylpyridinium.
Further research is needed to determine methylpyridinium effects on humans. The researchers also suggested that a dietary supplement could be developed to offer the benefits of the coffee chemical to those not keen on the beverage.
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