College Times

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Ladies, next time you order that double shot of espresso you might want to think what it could do to your breasts.

According to a new study published earlier this month in the British Journal of Cancer, having as little as three cups of coffee a day may cause a large enough swing in estrogen levels to shrink breast size.

The study’s author Helena Jernstroem of Lund University in Sweden also reported that women with large breasts are the most likely to be affected.

The study measured the breast sizes of 300 coffee drinking women and concluded that there is, in fact, a correlation.

This isn’t cause for women worldwide to panic, however, this shrinkage factor is said to affect only 50 percent of the female coffee drinking population, and as the study’s author also wrote, the breasts aren’t going to disappear, they’ll just shrink away from their original fuller form.

Along with the outward effects of caffeine on the body, there are other basic health factors to look at. Several studies over the years have highlighted caffeine’s role in relation to breast cancer. Jernstroem’s study claims that caffeine may actually reduce the likelihood of breast cancer, because there are substances in caffeine that alter a woman’s metabolism and actually make women more resistant to developing tumors.

Shirley Brydie, a PhD RN clinical assistant professor at Arizona State University, has come across many of the benefits and negative effects associated with caffeine in her work in the medical field.

“Caffeine can cause a problem looking at how much the person uses for how long, what the condition of the breasts were prior to and family history,” she says. “I personally cannot see it reducing the (breast) size, but then the thing is if they already had smaller breasts or saw that now they are one cup smaller or something, they need to control the intake of the caffeine they were ingesting.”

As a stimulant, caffeine is known to have other side effects including a suppressed appetite, which could play a role in affecting breast size.

“A lot of people that use caffeine may find it decreases their appetite. So appetite is another variable we can put in there. With decreased weight, we can have a decreased breast size,” Brydie says.

But Brydie cautions that there could be other factors as to the results of the study. “People have been drinking coffee for as long as they have been alive or as long as their grandparents have and so then there is always the possibility that weight loss and breast reduction might not be coming from coffee.”

With most things, Brydie suggests, “We should always be aware of the potential that this can possibly happen from overindulging and certain types of usage.”

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