Previous studies have been relatively small and have shown mixed results.
But now we've got results from a Harvard study that followed almost 50,000 male health professionals for more than two decades. A lot of them drank a lot of coffee, which seems to have helped.
More than 5,000 of them got prostate cancer 642 of them the most lethal form. "For the men who drank the most coffee their risk of getting this bad form of prostate cancer was about 60 percent lower compared to the men who drank almost no coffee at all," says Lorelei Mucci, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health and an author of the study.
When they saw the results, Mucci says she and her colleagues said, "Wow, that's a lot!"
"Among risk factors that people have studied for lethal prostate cancer, this is one of the strongest," she told Shots.
The same group reported about a 50 percent reduced risk of dying from prostate cancer among men who exercised regularly two or three brisk walks a week was enough.
The new study shows that getting a 60 percent reduction in risk of aggressive prostate cancer requires a lot of coffee at least six cups a day. However, men who drank three cups a day had a 30 percent lower chance of getting a lethal prostate cancer, and that's not bad.
Coffee Lowers Prostate Cancer Risk
Comments