Drinking coffee and tea may lower risk of stroke and dementia
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Good news for all coffee and tea lovers!
A recent study suggested that habitually drinking coffee or tea in your later years could improve brain functions and maintain good health.
UK researchers found that healthy older adults who regularly drank coffee and/or tea were less likely to develop dementia or suffer strokes over an 11-year period than those who drank neither.
The findings may not directly form a cause-and-effect link, but they can indicate that these crowd-favourite drinks have some health benefits.
There remains a debate over the benefits of coffee and tea in reducing the risk of stroke and dementia. Photo from Yahoo! Sport.
Dementia is described as a progressive and currently incurable impairment of cognitive abilities, the most common type being Alzheimer’s disease. Though it mostly affects older adults, it is not a normal part of ageing.
On the other hand, a stroke happens when blood and oxygen flow in the brain is interrupted. Victims may be left with many lingering complications, which include dementia.
While tea has long been considered a healthy drink, coffee’s health benefits have always been in question. However, studies have confirmed that the drink actually does some good.
Recent research has suggested that drinking coffee regularly is linked to a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, certain cancers, and early death in general.
China-based researchers looked at data collected by the UK Biobank, a long-running research project that’s been tracking the health of volunteers in the United Kingdom since the mid-2000s. For almost 12 years now, scientists have studied 365,682 people between the ages of 50 and 74 with no pre-existing stroke or dementia. During that time, hospital records reported 5,079 cases of dementia and 10,053 cases of stroke, and it turns out that compared to non-drinkers, regular coffee and/or tea drinkers had a 28% lower risk of dementia and 32% lower risk of stroke.
“Our findings suggested that moderate consumption of coffee and tea separately or in combination were associated with lower risk of stroke and dementia,” the authors wrote. However, they also cautioned that observational studies such as these can’t directly provide causation.
Other studies oversaw the effects of coffee and tea consumption on the functioning of our blood vessels, which observed that these drinks seemed to lower the risk of ischemic strokes precisely, rather than hemorrhagic strokes. Ischemic strokes (which comprise 80% of stroke cases) are caused by clots blocking the blood vessels, while hemorrhagic strokes result from blood vessel breakage.
The authors also suggested looking more into the antioxidant benefits of caffeine.
“Our findings support an association between moderate coffee and tea consumption and risk of stroke and dementia. However, whether the provision of such information can improve stroke and dementia outcomes remains to be determined,” the researchers concluded.
It’s great that there are benefits to regularly drinking coffee and tea. But remember, having too much of anything should always be something we watch carefully!
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