Coffee loves your liver

Society ripples with popular phenomena: smart phones, Facebook, Twitter, and Sudoku number among the most obvious. All of these unashamedly carry the title “phenomenon” but as far as popularity and pervasiveness go the beverage brewed from the bean of the coffee plant defers to none of these. Finally, in 2013 in Australia, one of the longest chases in history found a denouement as coffee finally overtook tea as the most widely consumed drink. While too much coffee is undoubtedly a bad thing, a little of this brew is not only highly sociable, it is also relatively healthy. This has been reinforced in a new study showing that coffee drinking reduces your chance of developing liver cancer.

The study involved gathering data from research articles published between 1996 and 2012. Out of this the researchers chose 16 studies involving more than 3,000 people.

Analysis of the data showed that people who drank two cups of coffee a day were 40 per cent less likely to develop liver cancer than people who did not drink coffee at all. That figure rose to 50 per cent for people who drank three cups of coffee daily.

It might be that the link here is diabetes. Previous research has shown that coffee drinking can reduce the risk of developing diabetes. In turn, diabetes is a risk factor for liver cancer. Indeed, the American National Cancer Institute lists diabetes as the most common risk factor for liver cancer.

It’s just another reason to savour that cup of coffee.