Research carried out at the University of South Florida implies that it may be time to forget your Alzheimer’s and drink your coffee. Alzheimer’s disease is the condition seen often in old age in which a person is unable to remember recent events. It is also the stuff of jokes about every time a person in mid-life or older forgets something. The scientists at South Florida studied a strain of mice that has been bred to get Alzheimer’s disease, or at least the mouse variety. These critters develop high levels of beta amyloid in their brain and then the plaques that inhibit nerve transmission, the same findings that researchers see in humans. Because mice live shorter lives than humans, old age comes sooner and scientists can see sooner if whatever they have been doing to the mice has had an effect. Now these folks have been having their little research subjects drink coffee. And, it appears that it is time to forget your Alzheimer’s and drink your coffee. Regular and healthy organic coffee both contain caffeine and a number of other useful ingredients, one or more of which appears to reduce levels of beta amyloid in the brain. A study that the South Florida researchers published in the Journal of Neuroscience shows that Caffeine protects Alzheimer’s mice against cognitive impairment and reduces brain beta-amyloid production. The coffee drinking mice kept their memories! In addition, researchers found that high coffee consumption in mice raised levels of granulocyte colony stimulating factor, a chemical that has reduced levels in Alzheimer’s patients. So how does this lead to the presumption that you should forget your Alzheimer’s and drink your coffee?
It Takes Time to Get Alzheimer’s Disease
Alzheimer’s disease is not something that people are born with. The primary finding in the brains of people who die with this disease it that there are plaques of a protein called beta amyloid that gum up nerve junctions and inhibit nerve transmission. One of the approaches to preventing the disease is to try to reduce levels of beta amyloid protein and thus reduce the production of nerve-damaging plaques. An ideal treatment would be something that people do, eat, or drink every day that would reduce the incidence of or eliminate the disease. Coffee is a natural for this purpose. Caffeine and something else in coffee reliably reduce beta amyloid levels in the brain of mice. Regular and organic coffee antioxidants are already known to reduce the risk of Type II diabetes, prostate cancer, colon cancer, liver cancer and endometrial cancer. Now, with the possibility that long term coffee consumption may reduce beta amyloid plaque production, it may well be time to forget your Alzheimer’s and drink your coffee!
Don’t Forget to Drink Enough Coffee
Previous research had shown than drinking a cup of coffee a day was related to a lower incidence of Alzheimer’s than with non-coffee drinkers. Other caffeinated beverages do not convey this effect which is unique to coffee. More recent work shows that the reduction in the incidence of Alzheimer’s goes up with the number of cups of coffee that a person drinks each day. The great part of this research is that people drink coffee every day. We already know that higher levels of coffee consumption lead to lower risks of a number of diseases. So, forget your Alzheimer’s and drink your coffee. No matter what the precise mechanism is you can enjoy your coffee and enjoy its wide range of benefits.