Drinking Coffee Connected To Mental Health, Study Finds

People who regularly drink coffee could be less at risk for the early stages of Alzheimer’s and dementia, a new study recently found.

Researchers at the University of Bari Aldo Moro in Italy studied 1,445 people 65-84 years old over an average of three and a half years.

They were looking for signs of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a decline in thinking and memory associated with dementia and Alzheimer’s, and found a link between it and coffee consumption.

The participants who regularly drank one to two cups of coffee during their life were less at risk for MCI.

But those that didn’t drink coffee regularly, started during the study or drank more than the one to two cups per day were more at risk.

It seems a cup or two throughout your life could be the sweet spot.

“These findings from the Italian Longitudinal Study on Aging suggested that cognitively normal older individuals who never or rarely consumed coffee and those who increased their coffee consumption habits had a higher risk of developing MCI,” the study reads.

So why could this be?

The study says that previous experiments in mice have shown that caffeine could have a “neuroprotective” effect, effectively guarding the brain against memory loss and other cognitive losses.

Still, the study’s authors encouraged more experiments on the matter.

“Larger studies with longer follow-up periods should be encouraged, addressing other potential bias and confounding sources, so hopefully opening new ways for diet-related prevention of dementia and AD,” it concludes.

Read the full study here.