New research from Spain shows that drinking Coffee significantly lowers the risk of developing a life-threatening stroke in women and its not the caffeine. Dr. Esther Lopez-Garcia of the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid and her colleagues found that over the course of more than two decades, women who drank coffee several times a week were actually 1/5th less likely to suffer a stroke than those who drank coffee less than once a month if they were otherwise healthy.

A new Harvard study involving 82,297 women aged 33 to 60 taking part in the Nurses’ Health Study shows that over the course of 24 years, 6,030 of these women developed type-2 diabetes. After relating the incidence of the disease with data obtained from a validated food frequency questionnaire, the researchers note that women with higher total intakes of the mineral Zinc had a reduction of up to 28 per cent in their risk of developing diabetes. The results of the study are published online ahead of print in the journal Diabetes Care January 26th, 2009.

Antioxidant-rich supplements may reduce the damage caused to hearing by noise and perhaps even age-related hearing loss according to promising results from animal studies. According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, about 26 million Americans have noise-induced hearing loss. The new studies using guinea pigs and mice found that supplements of beta carotene and vitamins C and E, and the mineral magnesium consumed prior to exposure to loud noise could prevent both temporary and permanent hearing loss in the animals.

An Australian study shows that safe, inexpensive B Vitamins could be powerful heavy hitters in the fight against migraines. Professor Lyn Griffiths of Griffith University said a trial found that Vitamin B-complex supplements and also the B vitamin folic acid significantly reduced the symptoms associated with migraine.   “The trial provided Vitamin B-complex supplements and Folic Acid to more than 50 long-term migraine sufferers for six months,” said Griffith, who is director of Griffiths Genomics Research Center.