A recent study by researchers in Australia, France, the Netherlands, Scotland and the US and published in the Archives of Internal Medicine has indicated that people who drink three to four cups of tea or coffee a day may have a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
But the researchers caution that it’s too early to say whether drinking more tea and coffee definitely lowers the risk of developing the condition.
The researchers found that people who drank three or four cups of coffee a day had a 25 percent lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared to those who drank none or up to two cups per day. On average, risk was lowered by 7 percent with each additional cup of coffee consumed.
Those who drank the same amount of decaffeinated coffee a day lowered their risk of type 2 diabetes by 36 percent and those who drank the same amount of tea lowered their risk by 18 percent.
Eighteen studies were conducted with nearly 458,000 taking part in total and the results from the studies took into account other factors that make people more likely to develop type 2 diabetes including age and weight.
However, 80 percent of people that took part in these studies were white so the researchers can’t be certain that the findings apply to other racial groups also.
It is not yet known why drinking coffee or tea appears to have this effect.