Three cups of coffee a day makes breasts shrink - study

DRINKING just three cups of coffee a day can make women's breasts shrink, researchers say.

• Coffee drinking can make breasts shrink, study says
• Three cups a day enough to trigger effect
• Breasts shrinkage can increase of every extra cup

Nearly 300 women were surveyed about their bust measurements and how many cups of coffee they drank in an average day.

According to the Swedish researchers, three cups a day was enough to start making breasts shrink, with the effects increasing for every cup drunk.

They said there was a clear link between drinking coffee and smaller breasts, as about half of women possessed a gene shown to link breast size to coffee intake.

"Drinking coffee can have a major effect on breast size," said Helena Jernstroem, a lecturer in experimental oncology at Lund University in Sweden.

"Coffee-drinking women do not have to worry their breasts will shrink to nothing overnight. They will get smaller, but the breasts aren't just going to disappear.

"However, anyone who thinks they can tell which women are coffee drinkers just from their bra measurements will be disappointed. The problem is that there are two measures for a bra - the cup size and the girth - so you wouldn't be able to tell."

It was not all bad news for women, as the researchers also found that regular hits of caffeine could help to cut the risk of breast cancer.

ALERT: Coffee Drinking Does Not Raise Breast Cancer Risk

By Crystal Phend, Staff Writer, MedPage TodayPublished: October 13, 2008Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco

BOSTON, Oct. 13 -- Several cups of coffee a day do not seem to pose an overall breast cancer risk, researchers here found in a large cohort study, confirming other research.

Breast cancer risk was not significantly elevated overall by drinking four or more cups of coffee a day (relative risk 1.08, 95% confidence interval 0.89 to 1.30), reported Shumin M. Zhang, M.D., of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard, and colleagues in the Oct. 13 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Nor did women with even the highest level of caffeine consumption appear to be at elevated risk (RR 1.02, 95% CI 0.84 to 1.22) in the analysis of the prospective Women's Health Study.
But as in some previous studies, high caffeine consumption appeared to increase risk for women with a history of benign breast disease. Risk was also elevated for developing hormone receptor-negative or larger tumors.
The researchers cautioned though, that these subgroup findings may be due to chance.

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Coffee may lower risk of uterus cancer: Japan study

9/1/08 TOKYO (AFP) - Women who drink a lot of coffee may have less risk of developing cancer of the uterus, a Japanese study said Monday.

The study led by Japan's health ministry monitored some 54,000 women aged 40 to 69 over about 15 years, during which time 117 women developed cancer in the womb, according to the medical team.

The researchers at Japan's National Cancer Center divided the women into four groups by the amount of coffee they drank.

They found the group of women who drank more than three cups of coffee every day were more than 60 percent less likely to develop uterine cancer than those who had coffee fewer than two times a week, the study said.

"Coffee may have effects in lowering insulin levels, possibly curbing the risks of developing womb cancer," the study said.

The medical team also studied the effects of drinking green tea, but did not find any link to uterine cancer.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control, uterine cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women.