Can Two Cups of Coffee a Day Help Keep Dementia Away?

A cup of coffee—it’s a comfortingly cozy antidote when waking up bleary-eyed on a Monday morning; it’s sipped over great conversations and laughter with friends; it raises our energy levels when we need a boost; and, it turns out, it may also have unexpected benefits in preventing dementia.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee studied a group of women over the age of 65, monitoring their levels of caffeine intake and cognitive abilities over the span of 10 years. The exciting findings seem to indicate a possible link between drinking coffee and lowering the risk of dementia. According to the study, consuming the approximate equivalent of 2 cups of coffee (261 milligrams) a day over a decade correlated with a 36% decrease in the risk of developing dementia. What is it, you may ask, about caffeine that could transform it into a security guard for our brain? Though scientists know that caffeine binds itself to receptors in the brain, they are still puzzled as to why it may have a positive protective effect against cognitive impairment.

Questions remain about the role of caffeine as an ally against dementia, but researchers are hopeful that further studies will uncover more answers. So whether it means trips to your local Starbucks or the coffee machine at work, or to your own home-brewed batch in the kitchen—a simple 2 cups of coffee a day may be what’s needed to help keep dementia away.