Drinking coffee and tea is linked with long-term cognitive benefits in older adults, according to two reports presented at the recent Alzheimer’s Association International Conference.
In the first study, which involved 6,001 people in the US, drinking two or more cups of coffee a day was associated with a 28% lower risk of dementia over seven years compared with drinking less than one cup daily.
People who drank up to two cups of tea a day had a lower dementia risk than those who didn’t drink tea at all, the first study found.
Those who drank the most caffeine had a 38% decreased risk of dementia, the first study showed. Changzheng Yuan, ScD, a researcher from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston and the Zhejiang University School of Medicine in China, presented the data at the conference.
The second study, involving 8,451 people, found that daily coffee and tea intake could predict the slope of decline in fluid intelligence decline, which includes reasoning and the ability to generate and manipulate information on the spot. The decline was slower among older adults who drank one to three cups of coffee per day and those who didn’t drink coffee compared to people who consumed more than four cups per day.
Also in that study, people who didn’t drink tea had a greater decline in fluid intelligence compared with those who drank one to three cups per day or those who had more than four cups.
The results “support the hypothesis that both coffee and tea intake may have a protective factor against cognitive decline, particularly for maintaining fluid intelligence,” Kelsey Sewell, PhD, a researcher at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia, said in a MedPage Today article.
“Further studies are required to elucidate the neuroprotective mechanisms of coffee and tea compounds,” Sewell said. “Coffee and tea intake could contribute to the development of safe and inexpensive strategies for delaying onset and reducing incidence of Alzheimer’s disease.”
