You don’t have to cut the morning caffeine drip to protect your brain against dementia in the future.
New research shows that daily coffee or tea –– and yes, the caffeinated kind –– is associated with better cognitive health in the long term.
Those who enjoyed two to three cups of coffee or one to two cups of tea a day saw the biggest impact, according to the study published Monday in JAMA.
Coffee drinkers in midlife had about an 18% lower chance of developing dementia later on, while tea drinkers had a 14% lower risk, said senior author of the study Dr. Daniel Wang, assistant professor in the department of nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Medical School in Boston.
Wang and the team did not observe the same benefit in decaffeinated options amid the data of the more than 130,000 people enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study.
Other research has supported the idea that caffeinated coffee can be linked to healthier aging and that caffeinated coffee and tea can lower risk for conditions like heart disease.
The most important takeaway is that the evidence doesn’t show that you need to cut out your morning fix to stay healthy, said Dr. David Kao, Jacqueline Marie Schauble Leaffer Endowed Chair in Women’s Heart Disease and associate professor of medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical School. He was not involved in the latest study.
Don’t start adding more yet
The research draws its strength in part from its reliance on the Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study, which are two long-term datasets that repeatedly did dietary assessments. However, it was observational, meaning that researchers can see the association but can’t say for sure that the caffeine intake caused the healthier aging.
The link between the two could be caused by other factors, experts said. For example, there might be an element other than caffeine that is healthy, but decaffeinating the coffee or tea also strips that nutrient. Or coffee drinkers could have better diets, higher socioeconomic status or common healthy behaviors, such as doing a morning crossword when drinking their coffee, Kao said.
While it might make intuitive sense to assume that it is a good idea to add or increase your caffeine intake based on recent studies like this, Kao said the evidence isn’t quite strong enough to suggest that people need to change their behaviors.
“More is not necessarily better,” said Dr. Sara Mahdavi, adjunct professor in the department of nutritional sciences at the University of Toronto, in an email. She was not involved in the research. “No one should start drinking coffee solely for brain protection.”
People with anxiety, insomnia or heart rhythm conditions or who have had bad reactions to caffeine should be especially cautious, she added.
Why coffee and tea?
Caffeine might not be the only benefit in drinking coffee and teas.
Coffee, for example, “contains caffeine along with hundreds of bioactive compounds that influence inflammation, glucose metabolism, vascular function, and oxidative stress,” Mahdavi said.
Coffee can reduce inflammation, blood pressure and oxidative stress (the last of which can lead to cell and tissue damage), thus helpfully impacting many of the physical signs of aging, Kao said.
The boost that comes from your morning mug might also help you stick to other healthy behaviors, such as getting good nutrition or exercise, he added. It is important not to have your coffee or tea and stop there.
“Regular physical and frequent activity, good sleep hygiene, not smoking, managing blood pressure and diabetes, staying socially engaged, and maintaining overall diet quality which should be mainly made up of whole plant-based foods … remain far more influential than any single beverage,” Mahdavi said via email.
“Coffee is not a substitute for well-established brain healthy behaviors,” she added.
Get inspired by a weekly roundup on living well, made simple. Sign up for CNN’s Life, But Better newsletter for information and tools designed to improve your well-being.
For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com