Now good news for those ardent coffee/ tea lovers! A new review of research on the relation between coffee and tea consumption, and diabetes risk suggests that drinking regular or decaffeinated coffee and tea all lower the risk of type 2 diabetes. Researcher Rachel Huxley DPhil, of the George Institute for International Health, University of Sydney, Australia and colleagues in the Archives of Internal Medicine analyzed information from 18 studies that included data on decaffeinated coffee and tea drinking and diabetes. Overall, the studies involved nearly a million participants. Researchers found each additional cup of coffee drunk per day was associated with a 7% lower risk of diabetes. People who drank three to four cups per day had about a 25% lower risk than those who drank two or fewer cups per day. So the study results showed that people who drank more than three to four cups of decaffeinated coffee per day had about a one-third lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes than those who didn't drink any.
     This is true in case of tea also, where those who drank 3 or more cups of tea stand one fifth the chance of developing diabetes compared to those who are averse to tea. Researchers say the protective effect of coffee and tea drinking appears to be independent of other potentially confounding lifestyle factors and raises the possibility that something in the beverages has a direct biological effect on lowering the risk of type 2 diabetes like magnesium and antioxidants.