Good news for your guts! Congrats to your colon! Why? Because coffee, that’s why. A new study finds that drinking coffee “dramatically” lowers the risk of bowel cancer recurring.
Coffee has long been linked with better gut health. One 2022 study found that consuming three to five cups of coffee daily was good for pretty much the entirety of your gastrointestinal tract. Then in 2023, another study concluded that coffee may ease irritable bowel syndrome. This new study examines how coffee can positively benefit those who have experienced bowel cancer in the past.
As reported by Science Alert, the study, performed by researchers from Wageningen University and published last month in the International Journal of Cancer, examined data from over 1,700 individuals from the Netherlands with stages one through three colorectal cancer (CRC); individuals with stage four, the latest stage, were excluded. After traditional treatment, CRC returns in patients around 30% of the time.
Enter coffee. When breaking down individuals into groups based on consumption, those who drank five or more cups of coffee a day were a staggering 32% less likely to have CRC return in a six-year time period than those who drank less than two. In effect, drinking five cups of coffee was associated with a total 10 percentage point drop in CRC recurrence.
As a secondary focus, the study also examined coffee’s effect on all-cause mortality. While those who drank more than five cups a day also saw a decrease in all-cause mortality, the most significant effect was for the group drank three to five cups a day. They saw a roughly 29% reduction when compared to the less than two cup a day group.
The findings of this recent study jibe with prior research on coffee and CRC and all-cause mortality. But like those studies, this one is observational, meaning no causation can be established as of yet.
Nonetheless, it’s a start. The evidence is mounting as more and more links between coffee and gut health are made. Between coffee and health of just about any kind really. They say a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, but when the medicine is this tasty, no sugar is needed.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
