Coffee intake may reduce type 2 diabetes

A research published in the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Natural Products provides a glimpse into the potential role of some of coffee’s natural compounds in reducing the incidence of diabetes.

Some facts about coffee and diabetes:

• Almost 1 in 10 Americans are diabetic, and at least half of the adult American population drinks coffee daily.
• The U.S spends roughly $40 billion on coffee per year; and in 2012, America spent $245 billion in managing its diagnosed diabetics.

Any link like this is unlikely to go unnoticed and likely to be researched.

How does type-2 diabetes happen?

Individuals with type 2 diabetes have a resistance to insulin. The role of insulin is to help control the amount of glucose in the blood. If glucose levels become high, the insulin instructs the liver and muscles to absorb more.

In diabetes, the body stops reacting to insulin as it should. Insulin is released, but the liver and muscle cells do not absorb the excess glucose. In the early phases of the disease, an increased amount of insulin is produced in an effort to convince the body to absorb more glucose.

As the disease progresses, insulin-producing cells in the pancreas slowly die off through overuse.

The health implications of diabetes can be dire: damage to large blood vessels in the heart, brain and legs. Also, damage to smaller blood vessels can cause problems in the kidneys, eyes, feet and nerves.

Compounds present in coffee:

There are more than 1,000 chemical compounds in coffee like quinic acid, 3,5-dicaffeoylquinic acid, acetylmethylcarbinol, dimethyl disulfide, putrescine, niacin, trigonelline, theophylline and caffeine.

Coffee & diabetes:

Research into coffee and its ability to prevent or slow the onset of type 2 diabetes has garnered a fair amount of attention and a recent review of the literature concluded that habitual coffee drinking does seem to lower the risk of type 2 diabetes.

The next challenge was to pinpoint the active ingredient(s) in coffee responsible fir this effect. Recent research conducted by Søren Gregersen and colleagues at the Department of Endocrinology and Internal Medicine at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark probably has narrowed down the search.

Gregersen and his team looked at the effect of a number of coffee’s constituents on rat cells in vitro. Most of the compounds did not have significant effects, but cafestol and caffeic acid showed some intriguing results.

Cafestol & caffeic acid in coffee:

Cafestol makes up around 0.5% of the dry weight of coffee beans, and has been found to have anti-carcinogenic effects in rats and neuroprotective roles in the fruit fly model of Parkinson’s disease.

Caffeic acid plays a major role in the building of lignin and is therefore found in all plants. It occurs in coffee but only in tiny amounts – around 0.03 mg per 100 g. Some studies have shown it to have anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory effects.

The present study found that cafestol and caffeic acid increased insulin production in the presence of glucose. Cafestol was also found to increase glucose uptake into muscle cells at a similar rate to current diabetes drugs.

According to Gregersen, ‘This newly demonstrated dual action of cafestol suggests that cafestol may contribute to the preventive effects on type 2 diabetes in coffee drinkers.’

This study will add another avenue of research into potential treatments for diabetes.

However, coffee filters eliminate most of the cafestol from the resulting cup. So, cafestol is unlikely to be the only useful compound in preventing incidence of type 2 diabetes…..and the search is on.