See, coffee is health food!
Drinking decaffeinated coffee is just as helpful as drinking regular coffee is for maintaining a healthy liver, a new study finds.
Regardless of whether they drank decaf or regular, people in the study who drank large quantities of coffee on a daily basis had lower levels of abnormal liver enzymes, the researchers found. This suggests that a chemical in coffee other than caffeine may help the liver, the researchers said.
Other studies have found that drinking coffee is associated with lower risks of developing diabetes, cardiovascular disease, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, cirrhosis and liver cancer.
“Prior research found that drinking coffee may have a possible protective effect on the liver,” lead researcher Dr. Qian Xiao, of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, said in a statement. “However, the evidence is not clear if that benefit may extend to decaffeinated coffee.”
Read more of this story by Laura Geggel on HuffPost Healthy Living.