With finals week approaching and long nights at the library ahead, many students turn to their coffee pots for help, never realizing their habit may reduce their risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.

A study conducted last year at Vrije University in Amsterdam said components in coffee appear to help the body metabolize sugar, thereby reducing the risk of Type 2 diabetes.

According to the American Diabetes Association Web site, Type 2 diabetes is a chronic disease caused by insulin deficiency in the body. The disease affects about 16 million people in the United States.

Type 2 diabetes is caused by an inability to make enough, or to properly use, insulin. Obesity is the most common and avoidable risk factor for Type 2, which experts estimate will afflict 220 million people worldwide by the year 2010.

According to the study, coffee contains minerals such as magnesium, potassium and other micronutrients that have health benefits.

Individuals who drank seven or more cups of coffee a day were 50 percent less likely to develop Type 2 diabetes. Fewer cups a day had a lesser impact.

Some professionals, like Joseph Dillon, diabetologist for the Iowa Diabetes Endocrinology Research Center in Iowa City, are skeptical of the results.

“Different theories on the health effects of coffee are always flying around,” Dillon said. “Ten years ago they said coffee increased chances for pancreatic cancer. I wouldn’t give the study all that much credit. If [the study results are] true, it’s strange that nobody has discovered it until now.”

The study results don’t resonate well with some students.

“I think a person is only justifying their actions by claiming their addiction will produce a health benefit,” said Christina Menning, sophomore in political science.

Philly Kybat, senior in psychology, said coffee drinkers should be careful before accepting the study’s results.

“It seems counter-intuitive to drink coffee in order to decrease diabetes, which results from obesity, because drinks with high caffeine also make you gain weight,” she said. “It’s cheaper just to exercise than to drink a bunch of coffee to lose weight.”

Jacob Etheredge, employee at Taraccino’s Coffee and junior in art and design, said the study serves as an advertisement for coffee companies.

“After the results of the study, it might become trendy to drink excessively large amounts of coffee, like drinking wine to reduce heart disease,” he said. “It’s just another trendy thing. It’s like in order to combat heart disease you become a drunk; in order to combat diabetes you become an insomniac.”

Kybat said high caffeine consumption increases anxiety, depression, insomnia and stress.

Others say though coffee isn’t necessarily healthy, it’s not as harmful as most people assume.

Judy Trumpy, nutritional therapist at Thielen Student Health Center, said she doesn’t see the negative effects of heavy coffee drinking, though she wouldn’t recommend consuming seven cups each day.

Trumpy said the World Health Organization provides no evidence that caffeine use is even remotely comparable to other physical and social drugs.

“If you don’t like coffee, there’s no reason to work up to seven cups a day because I don’t feel the results from the study prove anything,” she said. “However, I also don’t condemn anyone who does drink large amounts.

“It’s an individual choice whether you drink [coffee] or not.”