The Recipe Doctor
From low-fat recipes to recipes designed for persons with diabetes, Elaine Magee, MPH, RD, shares recipes and advice to create healthy meals that are guaranteed to please. [Editor's note: Elaine no longer contributes to Silver Planet, but we have made her archived blog entries available as a service to our readers.]
Does Caffeine Increase Your Risk of Cancer?
I love the taste of coffee, but I can’t drink it toward the end of the day because it keeps me up most of the night. And I can’t drink caffeinated coffee first thing in the morning because it stimulates my intestines—not a great idea given I have the type of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) that doesn’t need intestinal stimulation. And, unless I’m eating a meal, I can’t really drink caffeinated coffee in the middle of the day because a stiff dose of caffeine tends to give me a pleasant jolt and then send me crashing with weakness, fatigue, and what feels like a low blood sugar level. The caffeine in tea doesn’t seem to bother me at all, so I’m probably sensitive to caffeine, though small amounts don’t seem to be as much of a problem.
But most people drink coffee daily, and some also habitually enjoy caffeinated beverages like soda and tea. Well, the American Institute for Cancer Research recently assembled an expert panel to assess published research regarding diet and cancer.
After evaluating the research published before January 2006, the experts found it unlikely that coffee has any effect on the risk of pancreatic or kidney cancer (the two cancers for which lots of information is available). But that’s for coffee. What about caffeine in general? More and more research is being conducted to examine the effect of caffeine in cancer prevention and the development of cancer. So far, it looks like caffeine could be a double-edged sword when it comes to cancer treatment. For example, some research indicates that patients receiving chemotherapy may want to limit caffeine intake because of the possibility that caffeine causes cancer cells to become more drug resistant to chemotherapy agents.
On the positive side, caffeine could prevent certain types of cancer from happening in the first place. For example, some research on mice links the equivalent of three to five cups of coffee to skin cancer prevention. Stay tuned for more findings on the pros and cons of caffeine with respect to cancer.
By Elaine Magee, MPH, RD
The Recipe Doctor Blog
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