Science now suggests that caffeine could be a “shield” against dementia

For years, the debate about whether coffee is a hero or a villain for health has swung like a pendulum between one position and another. However, science has now given a good reason for the most coffee lovers to drink even more coffee. The reason is in a new study published in JAMA which has put evidence on the table that is difficult to ignore: moderate caffeine consumption not only keeps us alert today, but could be protecting our brain for tomorrow.

The data. We talk about how this is evidence that is difficult to ignore precisely because it is not a one-time survey from a weekend, but rather a Harvard research team. analyzed more than 130,000 people for four decades.

Specifically, the sample that has been handled in this case has been 131,821 participants, which included health personnel, and a follow-up of up to 43 years was carried out during the years 1980 and 2023. At the end of the study, 11,033 cases of incident dementia were documented, which is what had to begin to be studied.

With your diet. Once all this information is available, researchers have had to begin to cross-reference the dietary intakewhich have been updated every four years, with medical histories. Here the primary objective was to look for a pattern that related something in the lives of patients with dementia to their illness.

And the truth is that they saw a fairly clear pattern: those who consumed caffeinated coffee had a lower risk of developing dementia compared to those who barely ate it. Something that other studies in the past also pointed out.

Neither little nor too much. Logically, the study does not suggest that we should start drinking coffee as if it were water, since the effects of caffeine in large quantities are very harmful to health.

Science suggests in this case that the greatest benefit was observed in those who consumed approximately 2 to 3 cups of coffee a day. In concrete figures, it was seen that this consumption reduced the risk of having dementia by 18% and also showed in patients a lower prevalence of subjective cognitive impairment and better scores on objective memory tests.

Drink more coffee. According to this specific study, the benefit stabilizes, meaning that it does not improve further, but it does not worsen drastically in this group of patients. But other meta-analyses suggest that with consumption of more than 4 or 5 cups, the benefits can be reversed and generate other problems.

Caffeine is key. One of the most interesting findings is the chemical distinction that is made, since researchers separate people who drink caffeinated coffee and those who drink decaffeinated coffee. Here the results were quite clear: decaffeinated coffee consumption is not associated with a decreased risk of dementia or better cognitive performance.

This suggests that the neuroprotective effect does not come only from the antioxidants or polyphenols of the bean (which are also in decaffeinated), but caffeine is the active agent main in this equation.

The effect of tea. There is a large group of people who do not depend on caffeine to stay awake, but on the caffeine in tea. In this case, tea consumption showed coffee-like associationssince drinking 1 to 2 cups a day was also linked to a reduced risk of dementia and better cognitive function.

This is something that reinforces the theory that caffeine and other compounds such as L-theanine play a protective role in our nervous system.

Why does it work? Although in this case the study is not focused on telling us the reasons, the authors propose a series of biological mechanisms to understand it. The first of them is that caffeine blocks adenosine receptors in the brainwhich not only makes us more awake, but could reduce the accumulation of beta-amyloid, the protein associated with Alzheimer’s when it is in large quantities.

In addition to this, caffeine is also believed to reduce pro-inflammatory cytokines in the brain, mitigating neuroinflammation that precedes cognitive decline. And if we lacked reasons to defend caffeine, it is added that it improves insulin sensitivity and vascular function, two factors that, when they fail, open the door to dementia.

The small print. Although variables such as tobacco, exercise and diet were adjusted for, it cannot be definitively proven that coffee causes brain protection. It may always be the case that people with early cognitive decline give up coffee because it makes them sick, but the researchers tried to control for this by excluding the first few years of follow-up.

Furthermore, it must be taken into account that the participants were mostly health professionals with higher education, so the results could vary in populations with other lifestyles or genetics.

Enjoy, but don’t force yourself. The person who already enjoys 2-3 cups of coffee a day has one more scientific reason to do so without guilt in this case, since it is in the “sweet spot” of neurological protection. But if there are people who do not like coffee or it makes them very nervous, there is no need to force it, since the quality of sleep and the exercise They remain the undisputed kings of brain health.

Images | Fahmi Fakhrudin

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