Good News for Starbucks Lovers

OK I admit it, I'm a big coffee drinker, so maybe I'm biased in looking for studies that confirm my belief that coffee's not such a bad thing after all, but truth be told, I don't have to look very hard.

As I wrote in "The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth", coffee is a major source of antioxidants. In fact in a 2004 Journal of Nutrition study that examined the dietary records of over 2600 adults in Norway, coffee was found to be the single greatest contributor to their total antioxidant intake.

And that's not all. Studies have shown that drinking six or more cups a day significantly reduces the risk of diabetes! Other studies show it increases alertness, exercise tolerance in heart patients, and decreases the incidence of Parkinson's and gallstone formation in men.

Now a brand new study from Japan's National Cancer Center adds to coffee's growing resume of benefits. The researchers monitored about 54,000 women over the course of 15 years. They divided the women into four groups depending on the amount of coffee they drank.

Women who drank more than 3 cups of coffee every day were more than 60 percent less likely to develop uterine cancer.

"Coffee may have effects in lowering insulin levels, possibly curing the risks of developing "womb cancer", the study reported. (Uterine cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women.)

This doesn't mean it's perfectly cool to drink 16 cups a day. It's really not. Coffee can give you the jitters (like you didn't know that!) and can disturb one of the best anti-aging stress reducing strategies in the world- a good nights sleep! Plus it can aggravate PMS.

But if you're one of those who's been under the impression that "giving up caffeine" is always, across the board, a good thing, it might be worth taking a second look at that belief.

If you enjoy coffee, I see no reason to stop.

PS: that doesn't apply to you drinkers of daily 440 calorie sugared concoctions at Starbucks. That stuff's no good for you, but it's not because of the coffee!