Coffee, Your Genes, and Serious Illnesses

By Sondra Forsyth

Pour yourself another cup: new research from the University of Copenhagen and Herlev and Gentofte Hospital shows that coffee has nothing to do with developing “lifestyle diseases” such as obesity and diabetes.

The researchers also said that genes play a role in how much coffee we drink.

The study was published in the Journal of Epidemiology and is based on DNA and information about coffee drinking and lifestyle diseases from 93,000 Danes.

“We are the first in the world to have investigated the relationship with genes associated with a lifelong high consumption of coffee. These genes are completely independent of other lifestyle factors, and we can therefore conclude that drinking coffee in itself is not associated with lifestyle diseases,” said medical student Ask Tybjærg Nordestgaard from the Department of Clinical Biochemistry at Herlev and Gentofte Hospital, according to a news release.

“We can now see that the coffee genes are surprisingly not associated with a risk of developing type 2 diabetes or obesity. This suggests that drinking coffee neither causes nor protects against these lifestyle diseases,” says Børge Nordestgaard, clinical professor at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, and senior physician at the Department of Clinical Biochemistry at Herlev and Gentofte Hospital.