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A new study has found that increased coffee consumption may greatly affect your memory and thinking skills, and lead to Alzheimer’s disease.
It’s an astonishing finding as many previous studies have concluded the exact opposite – coffee helps diminish the risk of experiencing cognitive decline and dementia. On top of this it is generally accepted that coffee helps us stay sharp and perform better at work or school.
Some dieticians say it can help overweight or obese people lose weight, creative types often consume more than one cup per day for inspiration, and another recent study even found that it can help men with erectile dysfunction (ED).
So why does the new study paint coffee in such a negative light? The answer is that the danger may be related to how someone’s coffee consumption habits evolve over time, as well as their age as the study was focused on seniors.
Led by Dr. Vincenzo Solfrizzi from the University of Bari Aldo Moro, the researchers looked at the Italian Longitudinal Study on Aging (ILSA) and picked out 1.445 people with the age between 65 and 84. The team monitored the subjects for 3.5 years and paid close attention to their coffee consumption habits and the number of incidents involving mild cognitive impairment (MCI).
Mild cognitive impairment involves experiencing a decline in memory and thinking skills, and many field experts consider it the first step to developing a mental condition such as Alzheimer’s disease. They also estimate that somewhere between 10 percent (10%) and 20 percent (20%) of United States seniors with the age of 65 or older may be suffering from mild cognitive impairment.
The test results showed that subjects with normal cognitive abilities who started drinking more than one cup of coffee per day during the study were two times more likely to experience mild cognitive impairment, when compared with subjects who reduced their coffee intake and started drinking less than one cup per day during the study
The research team also found that the subjects who’ve increased their coffee consumption throughout their lives also had a chance 1.5 times higher of experiencing mild cognitive impairment, when compared to subjects whose coffee consumption stayed the same over time – one cup per day.
And here’s the good news for coffee lovers: subjects whose coffee consumption stayed the same over time and did not exceed one or two cups per day were far less likely to experience mild cognitive impairment than subjects who didn’t consume coffee at all, or consumed it rarely.
Subjects who consumed more than two cups of coffee per day could not be linked to an increased or decreased risk of experiencing mild cognitive impairment.
The new study was published earlier this month, in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.
Image Source: thecoffeeblog.co.za
