Coffee may be doing more than helping you make it through your workday. A new Finnish study found that people who regularly drank more coffee tended to have healthier body composition and several metabolic markers associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes.

Researchers studied more than 22-hundred adults and found that heavier coffee drinkers had less abdominal fat and total fat plus more muscle, despite having similar BMIs to people who drank less coffee. Higher coffee consumption was also associated with lower levels of certain amino acids that have been linked to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. The study found particularly strong associations in men, including healthier measures of blood sugar and insulin and differences in testosterone and other sex hormones.

There is an important catch: the study was observational, so it didn’t prove that drinking coffee caused any of these differences. Researchers now want to determine whether coffee itself produces the effects and, if so, which compounds are responsible.

So this isn’t a prescription to keep refilling your mug in the name of better health, but scientists have another reason to investigate what might be brewing beneath coffee’s already impressive resumé.
Source: OULU