Coffee, Exercise may fight Skin Cancer

Regular exercise if teamed up with moderate consumption of caffeine may help ward-off skin cancer, scientists said on Monday. Researchers at The Rutgers University in New Jersey performed experiments on mice illustrating that caffeine and exercise conspire to enable the destruction of precancerous cells whose DNA had been damaged by ultraviolet-B rays.

The study was conducted on groups of hairless mice who were exposed to UVB-rays generating lamps that damaged the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) in their skin cells, making them prone to skin-cancer. The mice were divided into four groups of which the first was fed on caffeinated water (the human equivalent of one or two cups of coffee a day); another group exercised on a running wheel and the third group did both. Besides, there was a fourth set of mice that neither ran nor caffeinated, it acted as the control group.

Apoptosis (programmed cell death) was observed to a certain degree in the DNA-damaged cells of all four groups, but the exercisers and those fed on caffeine showed a remarkable amplification over the UVB-treated control group. Apoptosis is a way in which cells with badly damaged DNA commit suicide UVB-damaged cells in this case. "If apoptosis takes place in a sun-damaged cell, its progress toward cancer will be aborted," said Allan Conney, one of the researchers.

When examined It was found that the caffeine drinkers, in comparison to the UVB exposed control group showed an increase of about 95 percent in the UV-radiation induced apoptosis, the exercisers had it raised by 120 percent while the mice that were both drinking and exercising depicted an increase of almost 400 percent.

The team of scientists who reported their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences said that research on drugs that induce apoptosis is currently in progress as a method of preventing different types of cancer. The combination of caffeine and exercise appears to have a similar protective effect, they said.

Several mechanisms at the biochemical level that might be responsible for such protective effects were suggested by the authors who acknowledged that the synergistic effects are still hazy. "We need to dig deeper into how the combination of caffeine and exercise is exerting its influence at the cellular and molecular levels, identifying the underlying mechanisms," Conney said.

It is not for the first time that beneficial effects of caffeine are unveiled; health benefits with moderate consumption of caffeine have been previously reported.

As scientists continue to scrutinize the relationship between caffeine and cancer it is also warned that coffee is definitely not a substitute for sun protection.