Prevention of melanoma: drink coffee!
Can coffee protect against skin cancer
Kirill Stasevich, "Science and Life"
Coffee not only helps to cheer up, but also protects against cancer: as researchers from the Yale University National Cancer Institute (USA) found out, those who drink at least four cups of coffee a day are 20% less likely to suffer from malignant melanoma. Generally speaking, melanoma arising from melanocyte pigment cells is not the only one of skin oncological diseases, although it is the most well–known - it is considered the most aggressive form of skin cancer, very prone to metastasis.Previously, there have been reports that coffee reduces the likelihood of developing non-melanoma tumors. However, similar work on melanoma gave rather contradictory and unclear results.
Erikka Loftfield and her colleagues analyzed data on almost 450 thousand people who have been monitored for more than 10 years. Among them, it was possible to identify a little more than 2,900 cases of severe melanoma, when the tumor extends beyond the upper layer of the skin, and about 1,900 cases of the early form of the disease, when it still remains in this very upper layer. The probability of developing skin cancer was compared with a variety of factors, from body weight and the amount of alcohol consumed to the level of UV radiation (to estimate the dose of ultraviolet radiation, the researchers used NASA data on how much sunlight falls on the place of permanent residence of a person).
It turned out, as the authors write in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (Coffee Drinking and Cutaneous Melanoma Risk in the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study, in open access), that, all other things being equal, coffee can serve as protection against cancer: among those who drank at least 4 cups of coffee a day, melanoma skin cancer occurred in 55.9 people per 100 thousand, and among those who were addicted to coffee to a lesser extent, melanoma developed in 77.64 people per the same 100 thousand. Until now, no one has used such a large amount of data to detect a link between coffee consumption and melanoma; perhaps that is why a clear result has been obtained only now.
According to the portal LiveScience (Coffee May Protect Against Some Skin Cancers), in this case we are talking about ordinary coffee with caffeine. As for decaffeinated coffee, it does not seem to have affected the chances of getting skin cancer in any way. Perhaps the anti-cancer effect is really related to caffeine, but it is also possible that decaffeinated coffee lacks some other substances that can resist melanoma. In general, the same claims can be made to the described work as to any purely statistical study: the correlation between phenomena tells us nothing about the mechanism of the phenomenon, and now we can only wait for experimental physiological and cellular-molecular work that can explain exactly how caffeine (or something else) prevents melanoma degeneration skin cells. The authors themselves point out that they could not take into account some factors: for example, the degree of skin pigmentation and the habit of using sunscreens – but both can affect the likelihood of skin cancer.
Recently, coffee has been finding more and more useful properties. So, three years ago, an article was published in the journal Nutritional Neuroscience, which stated that substances contained in both regular and decaffeinated coffee help neurons maintain normal metabolism in diabetes and thereby slow down their aging. There is also evidence that coffee drinkers are less likely to suffer from cardiovascular and infectious diseases. Caffeine, as the staff of the Johns Hopkins Institute found out, helps short-term memory turn into long-term memory, and experiments in this case were performed on people. In addition, it is caffeine that enhances the burning of fatty acids in hepatocytes, so with its help, it is probably possible to prevent fatty liver dystrophy, which occurs with alcoholism and overweight.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru05.02.2015