If you enjoy your cuppa or your shot of java, there is new evidence to suggest that this might be beneficial to your health.

For sure, too much tea and coffee - as in everything - is not a good idea. But evidence shows that tea and coffee drinkers have a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

Caffeine may not be the preventive factor though, as decaf coffee had the greatest effect, researchers reported in the Archives Of Internal Medicine.

BBC Health reported that they looked at 18 separate studies involving nearly 500,000 people. The analysis revealed that people who drink three or four cups of coffee or tea a day cut their risk by a fifth or more, the researchers said.

The effect was better with the same amount of decaffeinated coffee which lowered the risk by a third. Type 2 diabetes usually starts after the age of 40 and develops when the body can still make some insulin but not enough, or when the insulin that is produced does not work properly.

The identification of the active components of these beverages would open up new therapeutic pathways for the primary prevention of diabetes mellitus. However, the basic rules of more exercise and watching one's weight would still be essential, said the researchers.

In combining and analysing the date of the various studies, they found that each additional cup of coffee consumed in a day cut diabetes risk by 7 per cent.

Lead researcher Rachel Huxley of the University of Sydney in Australia said that because of the finding with decaffeinated coffee, the link is unlikely to be related solely to caffeine and that other compounds in coffee and tea - including magnesium and antioxidants known as lignans or chlorogenic acids - may be involved.

This article was first published in Mind Your Body, The Straits Times.