Coffee on the Mind
Written by Jacob Gomez
Edited by Jasmine Jeon
Jan 23rd 2022
Edited by Jasmine Jeon
Jan 23rd 2022
Coffee is indisputably one of the world’s most popular beverages. Go look on any street corner and you can see at least one Starbucks, Peet’s Coffee, or Dutch Bros shop with a long line forming around it. At least, this is true for anyone living near a college campus around midterm season. But why is coffee so popular? Is it the taste? The aroma? Or, is it the fact that coffee contains a compound called trimethylxanthine, or caffeine, for most people?
Caffeine is a well-known stimulant found in coffee beans, tea leaves, and even sodas and sports drinks. People who consume caffeine often do so in order to “combat fatigue and drowsiness”; anyone who needs a cup of coffee to wake up in the morning can agree (Evans et al., 2021). However, there seems to be more to caffeine in coffee than meets the eye. Recent studies have shown that caffeine in coffee can actually provide potential benefits like reducing a person’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
Alzheimer’s disease is known as a condition in which a typically elderly person progressively loses their memory and other mental skills. It is usually associated with the abnormal accumulation of a protein called beta-amyloid, which normally aids in cell growth in the brain (Murphy & LeVine, 2010). It is hypothesized that this build up causes brain cells to die, causing the connections between cells that store memories to go as well. According to the Korean Brain Aging Study for the Early Diagnosis and Prediction of Alzheimer’s Disease (KBASE) research group, coffee consumption does appear to have a connection with a lowered risk of having Alzheimer’s.
This doesn’t mean you should go out and drink as much coffee as possible to prevent Alzheimer’s! If anything, drinking too much caffeine can actually increase feelings of anxiety, heart rate, and even the risk of death in some people (Cappelletti et al., 2015). However, according to one KBASE study of 411 participants, people who drink 2 or more cups of caffeinated coffee a day are 65% less likely to develop beta-amyloid build up and Alzheimer’s disease compared to participants drinking little to no coffee (Kim et al., 2019). Similar results were found across other factors such participant’s sex, age, and regular alcohol intake. Although not fully understood, the researchers suspect that these results indicate that caffeine has a protective property that inhibits beta-amyloid proteins from growing within brain regions associated with memory loss (Kim et al., 2019). Due to this uncertainty, further research trials are needed to validate that coffee consumption, caffeine, and Alzheimer’s development are truly linked.
The idea that what we choose to eat can affect our health is not something new. However, our understanding of why certain foods can benefit us continues to change everyday. Although it is still in clinical trials, the possibility that coffee can work as a short-term fix for fatigue and a long-term prevention for one of the world’s most prevalent diseases is groundbreaking. So, the next time you want to treat yourself, think about swinging by your local coffee shop for a nice cup of joe.
Works Cited
Cappelletti, S., Piacentino, D., Sani, G., & Aromatario, M. (2015). Caffeine: cognitive and physical performance enhancer or psychoactive drug?. Current neuropharmacology, 13(1), 71–88. https://doi.org/10.2174/1570159X13666141210215655
Evans, J., Richards, J. R., & Battisti, A. S. (2021). Caffeine. In StatPearls. StatPearls Publishing.
Kim, J. W., Byun, M. S., Yi, D., Lee, J. H., Jeon, S. Y., Jung, G., Lee, H. N., Sohn, B. K., Lee, J.-Y., Kim, Y. K., Shin, S. A., Sohn, C.-H., & Lee, D. Y. (2019). Coffee intake and decreased amyloid pathology in human brain. Translational Psychiatry, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-019-0604-5
Murphy, M. P., & LeVine, H., 3rd (2010). Alzheimer's disease and the amyloid-beta peptide. Journal of Alzheimer's disease : JAD, 19(1), 311–323. https://doi.org/10.3233/JAD-2010-1221