By NAOYUKI MORI/ Staff Writer
September 25, 2025 at 07:00 JST
Takeshi Watanabe, right, and Masashi Ishizu, both assistant professors at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Tokushima University, release research results regarding the health effects of drinking coffee. (Provided by Takeshi Watanabe)
Drinking coffee can lower blood sugar levels and prevent arteriosclerosis among people of normal body weight, but obese drinkers will likely not experience such health benefits, a study found.
The study was conducted by a team led by Takeshi Watanabe, 40, and Masashi Ishizu, 32, who are both assistant professors at Tokushima University’s Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.
Several previous studies have shown that regular coffee consumption raises the level of adiponectin, a hormone known to lower blood sugar and prevent arteriosclerosis, or the hardening of the arteries.
However, research on whether coffee had the same effects in both normal-sized and obese individuals had not been conducted, according to the team.
The study targeted 606 men and women aged 35 to 69 living in Tokushima Prefecture, who were split into two categories based on their body mass index (BMI).
The “obese” category included 142 individuals with a BMI of 25 or higher, while the remaining 464 people with a BMI below 25 were classified as having “normal weight.”
The researchers analyzed the relationship between the amount of coffee the participants consumed and the levels of adiponectin in each group.
“Normal weight” individuals who drank three or more cups of coffee per day tended to have higher levels of adiponectin in their blood than those in the same group who drank less, according to the results.
In contrast, there were no significant differences in adiponectin levels between obese individuals who drank three or more cups of coffee per day and those in the same group who did not drink as much, the results showed.
“Even if obese individuals drink coffee regularly, they tend to have less secretion of adiponectin, and they don’t experience the beneficial effects,” Watanabe and his team concluded.
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