Men, save your prostate – drink coffee

I am a firm believe in whatever scientists and the such declare as bad for us one day suddenly becomes healthy for us the next.

Remember how we were all told how bad coffee was for us and that if we really needed to drink the swill then change to drinking the chemicalized decaf version.

Well guess what?

It turns out that for men at least coffee could save you from getting prostate cancer. This is according to a recent study that tracked the health of 48,000 male healthcare professionals from 1986 to 2006 which found that there is a “strong inverse association between coffee consumption and the risk of lethal prostate cancer“.

Published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute the report found that men who drank six or more cups of coffee a day were 20% less likely to develop any form of prostate cancer. For those men who only drank one to three cups per day saw that their risk was reduced by 30%.

Additionally they found, rather surprisingly, that it didn’t matter if the men drank caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee which lead the researchers to think that some other compound(s) that make up our favorite beverage is responsible.

Of course there were the expected “lets be cautious” response as exampled in this interview with the BBC by The Prostate Cancer Charity

“Although this study is a welcome addition to our knowledge, it is far from definitive and we would not recommend men who are not already habitual coffee drinkers to become so in the hope of preventing prostate cancer … Heavy caffeine intake is associated with other health problems and men with benign prostate problems might well make urinary symptoms worse.”

via Geekosystem