Increasing coffee intake bad for your brain

It will allow people to stay focused and alert.

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is considered a prodromal stage of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and dementia.

The researchers did not find any noticeable connection between mild cognitive impairment and coffee consumption in the case of participants who had more than two cups per day in comparison with those participants who never or rarely drank coffee.

According to Francesco Panza from the University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy, one of the researchers, “These findings from the Italian Longitudinal Study on Ageing 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”.

People who increased their coffee consumption over time to more than a cup a day (in other words, they were at some point one-cup drinkers and gradually inflated their habit) had twice the rate of MCI as people who reduced their habit to one or less cups a day.

However, participants who consistently drank a moderate amount of coffee – defined as one or two cups daily – were at lower risk of MCI compared with those who never or rarely consumed coffee.

While the exact mechanisms behind the neuroprotective effect of moderate coffee consumption identified in this study are unclear, Dr. Solfrizzi and colleagues have some theories. A1Rs play a key role in neuroprotection, decreasing glutamate release and hyperpolarizing neurons, and their activation attenuates brain damage, whereas their blockade exacerbates damage in adult animals.

Participants whose coffee consumption increased over time were also around 1.5 times more likely to develop MCI than those whose coffee consumption remained stable – no more or less than one cup of coffee each day. Caffeine causes anxiety, especially in high doses and in those with existing anxiety disorders. And coffee has been linked in the past to reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes, which is a risk factor for cognitive decline. Moreover, caffeine could in part compensate the cognitive decline in older individuals because its effects on vigilance and attention, mainly in situations of reduced alertness.

So the theme from these results (and the theme emerging across coffee research overall) is that steady, moderate consumption gets the best results.

Many studies conducted on the effect of coffee consumption on human health as to coffee’s relative benefit.

The study published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease aimed to estimate the association between change or constant habits in coffee consumption and the incidence of mild cognitive impairment (MCI).