The everyWoman Blog: Bigger Women Can Benefit From Drinking Coffee

Bigger Women Can Benefit From Drinking Coffee

The news for all of us coffee drinkers just keeps getting better and better. First we find out that it lowers our risk of stroke, skin cancer and depression, now a new study says our morning caffeine fix is associated with a lower rate of endometrial cancer among women. But more so for women of certain body sizes.

Conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health, researchers looked at cancer rates among 67,000 women, aged 34 to 59. They discovered that those who consumed four or more cups of coffee a day over 26 years had a 25% lower risk of endometrial cancer, compared with those drank less than a cup a day. Women who drank two or three cups a day had a 7% lower risk.

Interestingly enough, obese women were more likely than thinner women to show a reduced risk in cancer due to coffee consumption. Researchers theorize that this is related to the amount of estrogen we store in our fat cells. Coffee has been shown to lower a woman’s estrogen levels, and we know that lower levels of this hormone are related to lower rates of cancer. But, particularly after menopause, most of the estrogen that our body makes is in our fat cells, so coffee’s estrogen-lowering effects may be more dramatic among women with more fat.

And in case you’re wondering about the effects of caffeine versus decaf here, the research team says caffeinated coffee has a greater cancer-reducing benefit, but decaf can also lower our risk. All of which is good news if you’re a java junkie like me. Too bad we can’t use this as a rationale to drink more of those sugar-laden pumpkin spiced lattes though.

Photo: Thinkstock

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