A new study published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, found that women age 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. There appears to be no significant between caffeine intake and cognitive performance in men. "Caffeine is a psychostimulant which appears to reduce cognitive decline in women," said lead study author Karen Ritchie, PhD, of INSERM, the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research, in Montpellier, France. This adds to a growing list of studies demonstrating caffeine`s beneficial effects such as one done by Hameleers et al published in Human Psychopharmacology that linked habitual caffeine consumption with improved long-term memory and faster locomotor speed.
Even better news is the finding that this power increases with age. The older the women, the less the memory loss. The protective effect was most profound among older women in preventing deficits in verbal retrieval and less so with visuospacial memory. However scientists and doctors are not so quick to being prescribing caffeine as treatment just yet. Ritchie adds, "While we have some ideas as to how this works biologically, we need to have a better understanding of how caffeine affects the brain before we can start promoting caffeine intake as a way to reduce cognitive decline, but the results are interesting — caffeine use is already widespread and it has fewer side effects than other treatments for cognitive decline, and it requires a relatively small amount for a beneficial effect." The study also found that caffeine appears to protect seniors from heart disease and death.
