Wake up, sip two cups of hot coffee and go for a run -- just make it a habit if you want to reduce the risk of developing skin cancer.
Researchers in the United States have found that a combination of coffee drinking and regular exercise is good for health as it may help to prevent skin cancer caused by the Sun's ultraviolet rays.
"The caffeine and exercise seemingly conspire to kill off precancerous cells whose DNA has been damaged by UV-B rays," lead researcher Allan Conney wrote in the 'Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences' journal.
In fact, the researchers at the Rutgers University in New Jersey came to the conclusion after examining the effects of ultraviolet light on rodents bred to be hairless and so particularly vulnerable to the effects of sunlight.
Four groups of rodents were exposed to UV-B radiation, but were given different diets and exercise regimes. One group drank caffeinated water -- equivalent to two cups of coffee for humans -- another voluntarily exercised on a running wheel, while a third group both drank caffeine and ran.
The fourth group, which served as a control, neither ran nor drank caffeine. Subsequently, all of them were exposed to lamps that generated UV-B radiation that damaged the DNA in their skin cells.
The team then looked for evidence of programmed cell death, also known as apoptosis, among the four groups of UV-B-treated mice.
According to their findings, the caffeine drinkers showed an increase of about 95 per cent in UV-B-induced apoptosis, the exercisers showed a 120 per cent increase, while the mice that were both drinking and exercising showed a nearly 400 per cent increase.
"The cumulative difference seen in the caffeine drinking runners can likely be attributed to some kind of synergy between the two factors," wrote Dr Conney.
