(08-05-13) Study: Caffeine harms glucose metabolism in type-2 diabetics

by David Gutierrez, staff writer

(NaturalNews) Coffee-loving diabetics, watch out! Although some studies have
shown that coffee drinking may actually help prevent or regulate diabetes, the
evidence seems to suggest that caffeine actually worsens diabetic symptoms. In
fact, caffeine appears to outweigh all the benefits that coffee would otherwise
provide.

Researchers from Duke University have conducted several studies into the
effects of caffeine on people with type 2 diabetes. One such study, published
in the journal Diabetes Care in 2004, looked at 11 men and three women who
regularly drank the equivalent of about four cups of coffee per day.

Participants were either given caffeine in the form of gelatin capsules mixed
with dextrose, or were given a placebo pill of dextrose alone. Those in the
experimental group received 250 mg of caffeine, taken with water. An hour
later, they were given another 125 mg of caffeine along with a commercial
liquid meal containing 75 mg of carbohydrates.

The researchers found that while caffeine did not affect fasting levels of
glucose or insulin response, it did worsen diabetic symptoms after the meal
compared with the placebo. When taken with food, caffeine increased blood
levels of insulin by 48 percent and increased blood sugar by 21 percent
relative to the placebo.

Caffeine increases daily blood sugar
In 2008, the same researchers published a follow-up study in the journal
Diabetes Care. They placed continuous blood sugar monitors on 10 participants,
all of whom had type two diabetes and averaged four cups of coffee per day.
Instead of drinking coffee, the participants were assigned to take one 250 mg
caffeine capsule at breakfast and another at lunch; this totaled an amount of
caffeine equivalent to that the participants normally consumed. On a separate
day, the participants were instead assigned to take placebo pills.

When the participants took caffeine, their average daily blood sugar levels
were 8 percent higher than on days they took a placebo. As in the first study,
their blood sugar levels also spiked higher immediately following meals when
they had taken caffeine.

"These are clinically significant blood-sugar elevations due to caffeine,"
researcher James D. Lane said.

Lane noted that the increase in blood sugar seen from caffeine was equivalent
to the decrease gained from diabetes drugs - suggesting that drinking caffeine
might actually cancel out the effect of diabetes medication.

"For people with diabetes, drinking coffee or consuming caffeine in other
beverages may make it harder for them to control their glucose," he said.

In a seeming contradiction, some studies have actually shown that high coffee
consumption may decrease a person's risk of diabetes. According to diabetes
researcher Rob van Dam, this is due to other chemicals that naturally occur in
coffee; unfortunately, the beneficial effect of these compounds seems to be
canceled out by caffeine.

"We did do one study where we put caffeine in decaf coffee, and still we saw
the same exaggeration of glucose after meals in people with diabetes," van Dam
said. "So it seems those other compounds in coffee certainly don't eliminate
the caffeine effect we have seen."

Sources for this article include:

http://www.vitasearch.com/get-clp-summary/32973

News

---

In evidenza

"L'informazione presente nel sito serve a migliorare, e non a sostituire, il rapporto medico-paziente."

Per coloro che hanno problemi di salute si consiglia di consultare sempre il proprio medico curante.