Coffee Causes Cancer and Heart Diesease ?

Times and again, I have been told that Coffee is bad for me. My wife had been resorting to hiding my coffee bags and replacing my Nescafe bottle with Milo. Honestly, I am not addicted to coffee, but I do sincerely love and enjoy drinking black coffee. To me, anything in black is "high Tech" and black is beautiful. And to most people of Chinese origin, at least, that was what my late mother told me, any drink in black colour is a healthy drink ( Ang ang beh hai lang, All All car si poh) ! So, as a man of tolerance, and in order not to belittle or offend my lovely family members, I take my coffee drinking habits elsewhere or in their absence. Coffee drinking is in fact a lonely man's pleasure !

This morning, while relaxing in a spa in Shah Alam, I chanced upon reading a small article in a local newspaper stating that a research organization has concluded that drinking 5 cups of coffee a days can help to decrease the chances of acquiring the dreaded cancer. That sounds refreshing ! On reading this article, I immediately summon the service personnel to make me one cup of nice hot aromatic coffee. Hmm... this is probably my best coffee for the day......

Let me rehashed and share with you some of the articles I read :

1. "New York, NY - October 21, 2004 - New research has uncovered coffee's significant, potential properties in lowering the risk of certain cancers, according to toxicologist and food-safety expert Eileen Madden, PhD. in a presentation at Coffee and Your Health: Surprising Findings, a symposium for science writers held today at the New York Academy of Sciences. Dr. Madden also notes that these newer findings tend to support a growing, wider scientific consensus on coffee's predominately healthful properties, in a major turnaround from old conclusions reached by flawed methodologies. According to Dr. Madden, When all of the available research is evaluated together it seems to suggest that coffee is associated with a decreased risk of colon cancer."
2. "A paper just published by researchers at the renowned Mario Negri Institute in Milan reviews all the scientific research on coffee and colorectal cancer to date, and concludes that coffee consumption not only does not have a causal link to cancer, but that regular coffee drinking seems to be related to a decreased risk of colon cancer as great as 25%."
3. "http://www.mercola.com - Coffee and Colorectal Cancer - Data from two large prospective studies to explore the link between coffee, tea and caffeine and colorectal cancer during close to 2 million person-years of follow-up. Among people who drank caffeinated coffee or tea, no association was found with colon or rectal cancers. However, those who drank two or more cups per day of decaffeinated coffee had about half the risk of rectal cancer (12 cases per 100,000 person-years of follow-up) as those who never drank decaffeinated coffee (19 cases of rectal cancer per 100,000 person-years of follow-up).
4. AP WASHINGTON, Aug. 26, 2002 - Caffeine, the chemical stimulant in coffee and tea, has been found to lower the risk of skin cancer in laboratory mice. A study suggests that a skin lotion spiked with caffeine or with another compound found in green tea can reduce by more than half the number of cancer tumors on the skin of hairless mice exposed to brutal levels of ultraviolet radiation, said Dr. Allan Conney, a professor of cancer and leukemia research at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. "We had between 50 to 70 percent tumor formation inhibition in the mice that were treated with caffeine or with EGCG (the other chemical compound)," said Conney, senior author of a study appearing this week in the online site of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
5. National Cancer Center in Tokyo analysed a 10-year study of 90,000 people in Japan. They found that middle-aged and elderly people who drank coffee daily had half the rate of a common liver cancer compared with less frequent consumers (Journal of the National Cancer Institute, vol 97, p 293). And the more coffee people drank, the lower the risk. It is not clear if decaffeinated coffee has the same effect, as few people in the study drank it. "There is caffeine and antioxidants in coffee. Maybe both or either are protective,"
6. Mayo CLinic - Coffee has a long history of being blamed for many ills — from the humorous, "It will stunt your growth" to the not-so-humorous claim that it causes heart disease and cancer. But some recent research indicates that coffee may not be so bad after all. So which is it — good or bad for your health? The best answer may be: It doesn't seem to hurt and it may help. Regarding other health effects of coffee, some evidence suggests that drinking coffee may protect against type 2 diabetes and colon cancer. But there is much more evidence of a protective effect from fruits, vegetables and whole grains than from coffee. So don't be afraid to enjoy your coffee as part of a healthy diet that includes a wide variety of foods
7. http://www.JewishWorldReview.com (KRT) Getting buzzed on coffee can reduce the risk of developing breast cancer among women who have a family history of the illness, new research shows. Women with BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutations — found frequently among Jews of Eastern European descent — lowered their risk of breast cancer when they drank caffeinated coffee, according to a study of 1,690 women in four countries. Women with the gene mutations who drank six or more cups of java a day cut their risk of breast cancer by nearly 70 percent compared with those who didn't drink coffee at all, said the study leader, Dr. Steven Narod of the University of Toronto. Women with BRCA gene mutations who drank one to three cups of coffee daily lowered their risk by 10 percent, and those who drank four to five cups cut their risk by 25 percent, according to findings published in this month's International Journal of Cancer
8. Study showed heavy coffee drinking did not increase the risk of heart disease. Researchers from the Harvard Medical School headed by a Spanish scientist investigated data of over 120,000 participants from two large-scale studies: the Health Professionals Study and the Nurses' Health Study. Coffee consumption, cholesterol levels and heart disease incidences were analyzed. After making a long list of adjustments, researchers found that coffee drinkers did not have a higher risk of heart disease, even among the heavy consumers who drank more than 6 cups daily. The results of this study were published in the Circulation journal in May 2006.

In conclusion, I do not know much about statistical modelling or medical & clinical research. But for me, one thing I am very certain about the positive effect of coffee is, it makes me more alert, more practical, more tolerance, more philosophical, and with a sense of sarcastic humour... And, coffee drinking is one of the greatest civilized habits of mankinds for thousands of years ! Moreover, which great man and great thinker does not drink coffee ?

Now, having state my facts, would the health nuts leave me alone to enjoy my cup of black aromatic coffee ? The unwelcome nagging is causing me migraine....

May you live a healthy life. May the big fat laughing Buddha smile on you...... Namo Amithaba Buddha.