Those who drink more than couple of cups of coffee a day are less likely to get skin cancer, finds a new study. This study, which is published in the Cancer Research journal today, has linked caffeine to lowered risk of basal cell carcinoma, a common cancer type.

As many as 113,000 men and women of different ages were participated in this study. Those who sip 3 or more cups of a coffee a day were 20% less likely to get the skin cancer, when compared to those who didn’t drink coffee at all.

According to their findings, the decaffeinated coffee didn’t work like caffeinated coffee, when comes to lowering the skin cancer risk. It’s the caffeine in the coffee that has the ability to minimize the skin cancer risk.

So it’s not just the coffee, but the Caffeine that present in other food sources like carbonated drinks and chocolate can also help in reducing the skin cancer risk.

According to the skin care experts, caffeine has the capability to kill the damaged cells that lead to cancer.

“I wouldn’t recommend drinking coffee solely based on this work, but it does add one more thing to the list,” said study author, Jiali Han from Brigam and Women’s Hospital, Boston.

Skin cancer is affecting over 2.8 million Americans every year.