Exercise Plus Coffee May Ward Off Skin Cancer
Posted: July 31, 2007
A coffee habit, coupled with regular exercise, may help prevent skin cancers better than either factor alone, new research suggests.The study was done only with animals, however, and it's not a reason to abandon standard sun-protection habits.
"You should not give up the sunblock," said Dr. Allan H. Conney, senior author of the study, published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The findings aren't entirely new. "In earlier studies, we found caffeine and exercise -- either one by themselves -- inhibited ultraviolet light-induced skin cancer in mice," said Conney, the director of the Laboratory for Cancer Research at the School of Pharmacy at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.
But the new research shows that "the combination [of the two] works better," he said, providing a dramatically better anti-cancer result.