Time to pour a cup of coffee for a future healthy you!
It turns out that drinking a lot of coffee every day could potentially cut the risk of developing multiple sclerosis, according to findings from a joint team of Swedish and American researchers, the Independent UK reports.
Coffee-drinking habits of people in both the United States and Sweden reviewed shows that coffee may help reduce the risk of multiple sclerosis (MS), a debilitating nervous system condition that affects over 2 million people worldwide.
The findings, which were presented at the American Academy of Neurology's (AAN) 67th Annual Meeting in Washington, DC in April 2015, state that Americans who did not consume coffee were approximately one and a half times more likely to develop MS compared to people who enjoyed over four cups daily the year prior to the development of MS symptoms.
Another group of researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Johns Hopkins University in Maryland and the University of California, Berkeley, had two studies.
One in Sweden involved 1,620 adults with MS and a comparison group of 2,788 people without MS while another is a US study of 1,159 people with MS and 1,172 healthy people.
In both studies, people were asked about their coffee consumption and how long they had been drinking coffee. The researchers then estimated coffee intake before and during the start of MS symptoms among those who developed the disease, and compared the results with healthy groups.
According to Natural News, the researchers eventually found that the risk of MS was consistently higher among people who drank fewer cups of coffee every day in both studies, even after taking into account other factors that might influence the results.
It's thought that coffee's antioxidants -- specifically its polyphenols and flavonoids -- are primarily responsible for producing such a range of health benefits.
According to Joe Vinson, Ph.D., of the University of Scranton, "Americans get more of their antioxidants from coffee than any other dietary source. Nothing else comes close." He goes on to say that in the United States, it's the "number one" source of antioxidants in the diet, and that the hot beverage's antioxidants should be considered the "good guys."
