Study finds that people who drink coffee have a much lower chance of getting bowel cancer again

Two to four cups of coffee a day makes it much less likely for bowel cancer to come back in people who already have it.

IN SHORT

Coffee drinkers have much lower risk of bowel cancer recurrence

Dutch and British researchers looked at 1,719 people with bowel cancer in the Netherlands and found that those who drank at least two cups of coffee a day had a lower chance of getting the disease again. How much someone drank affected the result. People who drank the most had their risk drop the most.

The study also found that people with the illness who drink that much coffee are much less likely to die from any cause. This means that coffee can help people with the second most common type of cancer in the UK.

Again, people who drank at least two cups a day were less likely to die than people who didn’t. Like the risk of having another episode, the chance of dying dropped the most for those who drank at least five cups—by 29%.

Similarly, there appeared to be a strong correlation between coffee consumption and longevity.

The study found that people whose bowel cancer came back were 32% less likely to drink at least five cups of coffee a day than people whose cancer came back after drinking less than two cups. The World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) funded the study and published it in the International Journal of Cancer.

In the UK, people drink about 95 million cups of coffee every day.

The new study is the first to show that coffee lowers the risk of getting cancer. It already has strong proof that it lowers the risk of liver and womb cancer. It also has some proof that it lowers the risk of mouth, throat, larynx, and skin cancer. Researchers have already linked it to a lower risk of bowel cancer.

Experts referred to the results as “promising” and suggested that if further studies confirm the same findings, they might advise the 43,000 Britons who receive bowel cancer diagnoses each year to drink coffee.

Dr. Ellen Kampman, who led the study team and is a professor of nutrition and disease at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, said that the disease could come back in one in five people who had it before and could be fatal.

“It’s interesting that this study suggests that drinking three to four cups of coffee may lower the chance of getting bowel cancer again.”

But she made it clear that the team had only found a strong link between drinking coffee regularly and getting the disease, not that coffee caused the disease.

“We are hopeful, though, that the result is real because it seems to depend on dose—the more coffee you drink, the stronger the effect,” she said. “Coffee has a lot of biologically active compounds that fight free radicals and may help protect against bowel cancer.”

Additionally, coffee reduces inflammation and insulin levels, both of which have been associated with the development and spread of bowel cancer. It may also be good for the bacteria in the gut.

As a co-author of the study and chair in cancer epidemiology and prevention in the school of public health at Imperial College London, Prof. Marc Gunter said, “The results are very interesting because we don’t really understand why coffee would have such an effect on people with bowel cancer.”

He also said, “But they are also hopeful because they may point to a way to improve bowel cancer patients’ prognosis and chances of survival.”

“However, we need to do more research to find out more about the biology behind why coffee might have such a big effect on finding a cure and living with bowel cancer.” A substance called chlorogenic acid, which can also be found in kale, has been discovered by the WCRF as a possible key part of the explanation. This is because it helps control the body’s glucose and insulin levels.

The World Health Organization classed coffee as “possibly carcinogenic” until 2016. They changed their minds because there wasn’t enough evidence to support that label.

What Kinds of Coffee Affect the Risk of Colorectal Cancer?

The CPS-II Nutrition Cohort Study found that people who drink decaffeinated coffee are less likely to get colon cancer, even if they don’t smoke.

Coffee Use and the Chance of Getting Colorectal Cancer

Coffee is known to possess many bioactive chemicals that are pertinent to the physiology of the colon. The existing body of research regarding the potential preventive effect of coffee consumption on colorectal cancer is equivocal.

Coffee’s Role in Colon Health

A lot of people drink coffee, and it has bioactive ingredients that may be good for your colon health by preventing mutations or free radicals, lowering the production of bile acid, changing the makeup of your bacteria, and improving important bowel functions. People think that these biochemical parts might help protect against colon cancer, which is the fourth most common type of cancer in the world and the third most common type of cancer in the United States.

However, epidemiological proof of a link between drinking coffee and the risk of colorectal cancer is still not clearThere is some evidence linking the two, but the results vary depending on the type of study, the location of the cancer, the person’s gender, and their race. A new meta-analysis of 25 case-control studies and 16 cohort studies with more than 25,000 cases found that cohort studies might show an inverse relationship.

Researchers using case-control studies found that people who drank the most coffee had a 15% to 21% lower chance of colorectal or colon cancer compared to people who drank the least coffee. There is more and more proof that drinking coffee may help protect against other types of gastrointestinal cancer. The goal of this study is to look into the link between drinking coffee and the chancThe study will leverage robust clinical data, including cancer location, coffee preparation methods, and potential confounding factors.

“MECC Study: Unraveling Colorectal Cancer in Northern Israel”

It is called the Molecular Epidemiology of colon Cancer Study (MECC) and it looks at how common colon cancer is in northern Israel. The study has been going on since 1998. Clalit Health Services, Israel’s largest health care provider, selects participants from its database to ensure they belong to the same source group. We match people based on factors such as year of birth, sex, main clinic location, and race.

We interview people within six months of a diagnosis to gather information about their demographics, medical history, eating habits, and family background. There were a total of 9,242 people who took part in the study: 5,145 cases and 4,097 controls. The Institutional Review Board approved procedures at Carmel Medical Center (Haifa) and the University of Southern California, requiring written informed consent at enrollment.

Coffee Drinking and the Risk of Colorectal Cancer in Women

Research has linked an increased coffee intake to a lower risk of colon cancer. Our goal was to look at the link between drinking coffee and getting colorectal cancer in a big group of US women who had gone through menopause.

We collected data for the Women’s Health Initiative Observational Study, resulting in a follow-up time of 12.9 years. Our group of 83,778 women had a mean age of 63.5 years. We divided the daily coffee consumption into three groups: none, average (>0–4 cups), and high (4+ cups). We used a method known as proportional hazards modeling to examine the relationship between coffee consumption and colon cancer.

During follow-up, there were 1,282 new cases of colon cancer, which is 1.53% more than the previous year. Colorectal cancer was more common in moderate and heavy coffee drinkers compared to people who didn’t drink (HR 1.15, 1.02–1.29; HR 1.14, 0.93–1.38). Higher risks were associated with moderate drip-brewed coffee consumption (HR 1.20, 1.05–1.36) and heavy non-drip-brewed coffee consumption (HR 1.43, 1.01–2.02).

Our findings contradict recent meta-analyses by linking drinking more coffee to a higher risk of colon cancer. However, they do agree with other studies that show coffee either raises the risk or has no effect. The brew method’s results are novel and warrant further investigation.