Healio reports, “Drinking multiple cups of coffee or tea a day, or a combination of the two, was associated with a decreased risk for dementia and stroke” researchers concluded after comparing “data on 365,682 participants aged 50 to 74 years from the U.K. Biobank.”

Participants gave information about their intake of coffee of any type, including decaffeinated coffee, instant coffee, espresso, and filtered coffee, along with their intake of tea, including black or green tea.

The researchers enrolled participants from 2006 to 2010 and then followed them “until 2020 to investigate the association between coffee and tea intake and incidence of stroke and dementia.”

The findings, which were published online in PLOS Medicine, compared people who did not drink coffee or tea with, those who drank 2 to 3 cups of coffee and/or 2 to 3 cups of tea and found that the coffee and tea drinkers had:

• a 32% lower risk of stroke, and
• a 28% lower risk of dementia.

In another study, HealthDay reports researchers found that higher coffee consumption may “guard against Alzheimer’s disease in the long run.” Researchers “investigated whether coffee intake affected the rate of cognitive decline over 10 years in more than 200 people,” and “found that people who had no memory impairments and who consumed higher amounts of coffee had a lower risk of transitioning to mild cognitive impairment.” The study, published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, also revealed that “higher coffee intake appeared to be slowing the accumulation of amyloid protein in the brain, as well as being linked to positive results in the areas of executive function and attention.”

Coffee is “a rich source of antioxidants and other bioactive compounds,” Yuan Zhang, of the school of public health at Tianjin Medical University in China, and colleagues wrote. Tea that contains caffeine, catechin polyphenols, and flavonoids has been linked to forms of neuroprotection, “such as antioxidative stress, anti-inflammation, inhibition of amyloid-beta aggregation, and an antiapoptotic effect,” they added.

“From a public health perspective, because regular tea and coffee drinkers comprise such a large proportion of the population and because these beverages tend to be consumed habitually throughout adult life, even small potential health benefits or risks associated with tea and coffee intake may have important public health implications,” Zhang and colleagues wrote.

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