Prepare to be surprised: what coffee ACTUALLY does to your skin

Is coffee good for more than just wearing off the inevitable mid-day slump? 

A new study suggests that drinking a lot of coffee could actually reduce your risk of developing skin cancer. 

In the decade-long study, researchers analysed nearly 450,000 people who drank coffee. The participants had to fill in questionnaires that came from The National Institute Of Health about their various eating and drinking habits.

By the end of the study, close to 3,000 people developed malignant melanoma, a serious type of skin cancer that occurs in the cells that produce pigmentation.

After adjusting the research to account for various risk factors including smoking, family history and sun exposure, researchers found the very interesting association that the people who drank four or more cups of coffee a day were 20 percent less likely to developed malignant melanoma.

Caffeinated coffee in particular lessened the risk even more.

So how is this possible? The authors of the study think coffee contains extremely beneficial compounds (including caffeine) that appear to fend off cancer in a number of ways:

• They suppress cells that turn cancerous in the sun
• They fend off oxidative stress and DNA damage
• They absorb harmful sun rays (kind of like sun screen)
• And they detoxify carcinogens

This is all BRILLIANT news for us coffee drinkers, especially all of us whose Nespresso bills are sky high.