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Caffeine Helps Protect Memory
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The good news: Caffeine may help older people protect their thinking skills.
The bad news: The findings apply only to women.
This emerged from a new study involving several thousand participants.
Researchers found that women aged 65 and older who drank more than three
cups of coffee (or the equivalent in tea) per day had less decline over time on
tests of memory than women who drank one cup or less of coffee or tea per day.
The results were the same even after adjusting for other factors that could affect
memory abilities, such as age, education, disability, depression, high blood
pressure, medications, cardiovascular disease, and other chronic illnesses.
“Caffeine is a psychostimulant which appears to reduce cognitive decline in
women,” said study author Karen Ritchie, PhD, of INSERM, the French National
Institute for Health and Medical Research, in Montpellier, France.
But Ritchie said "we need better understanding how caffeine affects the brain
before we can start promoting caffeine intake as a way to reduce cognitive
decline."
However, she said that the results were interesting, noting that caffeine use is
already widespread and it has fewer side effects than other treatments for
cognitive decline. Also, it requires a relatively small
amount for a beneficial effect.
The study involved 7,000 people whose cognitive abilities and caffeine
consumption were evaluated over four years. Compared to women who drank
one cup or less of coffee per day, those who drank over three cups were less
likely to show as much decline in memory.
Moreover, the benefits increased with age – coffee drinkers being 30 percent
less likely to have memory decline at age 65 and rising to 70 percent less likely
over age 80.
Caffeine consumers did not seem to have lower rates of dementia.
“We really need a longer study to look at whether caffeine prevents dementia; it
might be that caffeine could slow the dementia process rather than preventing it,”
said Ritchie.
Ritchie said researchers weren’t sure why caffeine didn’t show the same result
in men.
“Women may be more sensitive to the effects of caffeine,” she said. “Their
bodies may react differently to the stimulant, or they may metabolize caffeine
differently.”
The study appears in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of
Neurology.
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