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How Does A Lifetime of Caffeine Use Affect the Cognition of Elderly Women?

When it comes to America’s national pastime, coffee gives baseball a run for its money.

Eighty-three percent of U.S. adults drink coffee, according to a survey from the National Coffee Association, which tracks coffee drinking trends in the United States.

The same survey found that Americans drank 587 million cups in 2013.

As far as health, it’s often said “a cup a day keeps the doctor away.” (A phrase no doubt invented by Big Coffee!).

But platitudes aside, how does a caffeine habit manifest itself in old age; specifically in regards to cognition?

It’s a question that academics have tackled before. But most of the previous studies focused on short-term caffeine use. What about people who had been drinking caffeine for decades?

A study, titled “The impact of caffeine use across the lifespan on cognitive performance in elderly womenand published in a recent issue of the research journal Appetite, examines that question.

The authors – Clinton S. Perry III, Ayanna K. Thomas, Holly A. Taylor, Paul F. Jacques and Robin B. Kanarek, all of Tufts University – studied 63 caffeine-drinking women between the ages of 56 and 83 years old. The participants were surveyed on their long-term caffeine use, and then asked to undergo several cognitive-related tests over two sessions.

The results are surprising and nuanced:

We hypothesized that increased caffeine use would be positively associated with cognitive performance, specifically for memory and speed of processing. Our findings do not support this hypothesis. However, we found intriguing interactions between caffeine consumption and BMI [Body Mass Index] for inhibitory and speed of processing performance.

Specifically, our analyses support a positive association between caffeine consumption (habitual and lifetime) and both inhibitory performance and speed of processing (lifetime consumption only) for participants with high BMI, no association for participants with normal BMI, and a negative association for those with a low BMI. This would appear to be in line with the idea that habitual caffeine use provides protection against cognitive decline, at least in the overweight and obese.

Another snippet:

The current experiment found no support for previous findings of caffeine’s general ability to protect against cognitive deficits associated with normal aging. However, we are the first to report an interaction between caffeine use and participant BMI on task performance and thus provide evidence that caffeine’s effect may not be one of broad preservation, but may provide focal defense against the deleterious impact of social and dietary stress on cognitive performance. In conclusion, we suggest that caffeine’s effect may be directly influenced by measures of individual difference such as BMI and thus more studies should explore the possible interaction effects between these factors when looking at the long-term effect of caffeine.

Read the full study – with all the facts and figures – here.

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