I love a cuppa. Do you? Of course you do. In fact, in the UK, tea and coffee are tied for top place for the nation’s favourite drinks.
Who can blame us, really? They’re comforting, they give us a kick first thing in the morning and if we don’t know what else to say in an awkward or difficult situation, there’s always ‘fancy a cuppa?’.
And now, we have even more reason to love it as a recent study has found that drinking a moderate amount of coffee can actually reduce your risk of developing irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
What is IBS?
IBS is a common condition characterised by stomach cramps, bloating, diarrhoea and constipation. The symptoms of it can come and go or last for days or even weeks. It’s not ideal.
Gut health specialists ZOE recently reported that 17.1% of people they surveyed had received an IBS diagnosis and the condition is more common in females than males with female diagnosis rates sitting at 19.1% compared to just 10.1% of males.
According to the NHS, it is a lifelong condition but it can be managed with diet changes and medicines.
Study by Oxford University reveals that coffee consumption reduces risk of IBS
Researchers at the University of Oxford wanted to find out if there was a correlation between drinking coffee and developing IBS because for a lot of people who already have the condition, coffee is often a trigger for symptoms.
However, what they actually found was that regular consumption of coffee seems to give coffee lovers a lower risk of developing IBS than people who abstain from the drink altogether. It turns out that those who consumed four or more cups of instant or ground coffee per day had a 19% lower risk of IBS development compared to caffeine abstainers. Wild.
There were similar results for people who drank half a cup to a cup of tea a day but frequent tea drinkers had similar odds of developing IBS to those that abstained from caffeine altogether.
Interestingly, another study found that regular coffee consumption also reduces the risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes.
What can’t those beautiful beans do?