COFFEE, TEA MAY IMPROVE LIFE EXPECTANCY

Researchers have demonstrated how daily intake of coffee and tea could lead to improved life expectancy (number of years lived in good health).
THEY are found on most breakfast tables around the world. They are commonly taken with milk and sugar. Some take them to stay alert, while to some it has become a habit. Coffee and tea are indeed two of a kind.
Although data on the health benefits of coffee have been mixed, researchers have always given tea a clean bill. However new studies suggest that coffee and tea may become indispensable on not just breakfast tables, but in preventive medicine.
Indeed scientists have found new evidence that drinking coffee and tea may help prevent diabetes, heart disease, liver damage, and breast, prostate, head and neck cancers. They say caffeine may be the ingredient largely responsible for these effects.
According to a recent study published in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology: Journal of the American Heart Association, high and moderate consumption of tea and moderate coffee consumption are linked with reduced heart disease.
Also, scientists say coffee consumption prevented the development of high-blood sugar and also improved insulin sensitivity in the mice, thereby reducing the risk of diabetes.
Coffee also caused a cascade of other beneficial changes in the fatty liver and inflammatory adipocytokines related to a reduced diabetes risk. The adipokines or adipocytokines are cytokines (cell-to-cell signalling proteins) secreted by adipose or fat tissue.
Their findings, among the first animal studies to demonstrate this apparent link, appear in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Additional lab studies showed that caffeine might be one of the most effective anti-diabetic compounds in coffee.
Results of another study links drinking coffee to protection against head and neck cancer. Full study results are published online first in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Using information from a pooled-analysis of nine studies collected by the International Head and Neck Cancer Epidemiology (INHANCE) consortium, participants, who were regular coffee drinkers, that is, those, who drank an estimated four or more cups a day, compared with those, who were non-drinkers, had a 39 per cent decreased risk of oral cavity and pharynx cancers combined.
Also, in what could lead to a major advance in the treatment of prostate cancer, scientists now know exactly why polyphenols in red wine and green tea inhibit cancer growth.
Polyphenol is kind of chemical that, at least in theory, may protect against some common health problems and possibly certain effects of ageing.
Polyphenols act as antioxidants that is they protect cells and body chemicals against damage caused by free radicals, reactive atoms that contribute to tissue damage in the body. For example, when low-density lipoprotein (LDL), that is ‘bad’ cholesterol, is oxidised, it can become glued to arteries and cause coronary heart disease.
Polyphenols can also block the action of enzymes that cancers need for growth and they can deactivate substances that promote the growth of cancers. The polyphenol most strongly associated with cancer prevention is epigallocatechin-3-gallate, or EGCG.
All tea contains polyphenols. Teas and polyphenols isolated from tea have been shown in the laboratory to act as scavengers of oxygen and nitrogen-free radicals, protecting the fatty membranes of cells, proteins and Deoxy riboNucleic Acid (DNA).
This new discovery, published online in The FASEB Journal, explains how antioxidants in red wine and green tea produce a combined effect to disrupt an important cell signaling pathway necessary for prostate cancer growth.
This finding is important because it may lead to the development of drugs that could stop or slow cancer progression, or improve current treatments.
Researchers in The Netherlands found, drinking more than six cups of tea per day was associated with a 36 per cent lower risk of heart disease compared to those, who drank less than one cup of tea per day and drinking three to six cups of tea per day was associated with a 45 per cent reduced risk of death from heart disease, compared to consumption of less than one coffee drinkers with a modest intake, two to four cups per day, had a 20 per cent lower risk of heart disease compared to those drinking less than two cups or more than four cups and although not considered significant, moderate coffee consumption slightly reduced the risk of heart disease death and deaths from all causes.
Researchers also found that neither coffee nor tea consumption affected stroke risk.
However, women, who drink Scandinavian boiled coffee, which chemically resembles French press and Turkish/Greek coffee, more than four times a day run a lower risk of developing breast cancer than women, who drink coffee less than once a day. This is shown by Lena Nilsson and her associates at Umeå University in an article in the Journal Cancer Causes & Control.
A major difference between boiled and filtered coffee is that the boiled version contains up to 80 times as much coffee-specific fatty acids. These fatty acids have previously been shown in animal experiments to inhibit the growth of cancer.
By comparing filtered coffee and boiled coffee in the Västerbotten Intervention Project (64,603 participants), researchers at Umeå University have been able to show for the first time that various brewing techniques can lead to different risk patterns for cancer. For total cancer, prostate cancer, colorectal cancer, and many other less common forms of cancer, there was no correlation.
Among women, who drank boiled coffee more than four times a day there was a lowered risk of breast cancer compared with women who drank coffee less than once a day.
Among women, who drank filtered coffee there was an increased risk for early breast cancer (under 49 years old) and a decreased risk for late breast cancer (over 55 years old). Boiled-coffee drinkers, but not filtered-coffee drinkers, also had an increased risk of pancreatic cancer and lung cancer among men.
The study, recently published in the scientific Journal Cancer Causes and Control, is the first in the world to compare the consumption of coffee prepared with two brewing techniques in regard to cancer.
Scientists have also revealed a strong inverse association between coffee consumption and the risk of lethal and advanced prostate cancers.
In a prospective investigation, Dr. Kathryn Wilson and colleagues at the Channing Laboratory, Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, United States, found that men, who drank the most coffee had a 60 per cent lower risk of aggressive prostate cancer than men, who did not drink any coffee.
This is the first study of its kind to look at both overall risk of prostate cancer and risk of localised, advanced and lethal disease.
More recently, results of another study published in the January issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention showed a decreased risk of gliomas, or brain tumors, associated with coffee. This association was found among those who drank five or more cups of coffee or tea a day, according the researchers from the Imperial College, London.
According to another report in Archives of Internal Medicine, drinking coffee may be related to a reduced risk of developing the liver disease alcoholic cirrhosis.
Cirrhosis progressively destroys healthy liver tissue and replaces it with scar tissue. Viruses such as hepatitis C can cause cirrhosis, but long-term, heavy alcohol use is the most common cause of the disease in developed countries, according to background information in the article.
Most alcohol drinkers, however, never develop cirrhosis, other factors that may play a role include genetics, diet and nutrition, smoking and the interaction of alcohol with other toxins that damage the liver.
A study on the relationship between coffee drinking and the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) or liver cancer has confirmed that there is an inverse association between coffee consumption and HCC, although the reasons for this relationship are still unresolved.
At least eleven studies conducted in southern Europe and Japan have examined the relationship between coffee drinking and the risk of primary liver cancer.
A study, led by Francesca Bravi of the Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri in Milan, Italy, was a meta-analysis of published studies on HCC that included how much coffee patients had consumed. Researchers combined all published data to obtain an overall quantitative estimate of the association between coffee consumption and HCC.
The results showed a 41 per cent reduction of HCC risk among coffee drinkers compared to those who never drank coffee. The researchers noted that the apparent favorable effect of coffee drinking was found both in studies from southern Europe, where coffee is widely consumed, and from Japan, where coffee consumption is less frequent, and in subjects with chronic liver diseases.
They pointed out that animal and laboratory studies have indicated that certain compounds found in coffee may act as blocking agents by reacting with enzymes involved in carcinogenic detoxification.
Other components, including caffeine, have been shown to have favorable effects on liver enzymes. Coffee has also been related to a reduced risk of liver diseases and cirrhosis, which can lead to liver cancer.