After documenting the consumption of tea and coffee by healthcare professionals for a staggering 43 years, the resulting data seems to support what many other studies have found: that coffee is associated with better neurological health.
The strongest effects were seen in participants who drank 2-3 cups of caffeinated coffee or 1-2 cups of tea per day. Exceeding this range didn’t seem to extend the benefits any further, but also didn’t register as a detriment to health.
131,821 participants from the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS) and Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (HPFS) were included in the analysis, which leveraged this world-class data set going back 43 years.
The professional participants were subjected to repeated evaluations of diet, dementia diagnoses, subjective cognitive concerns, and objective cognitive performance, which were tabulated and stored for scientists’ later use. Over the course of the dataset, 11,033 developed dementia.
Individuals who consumed higher amounts of caffeinated coffee had an 18% lower risk of developing dementia compared with those who rarely or never drank it. They also reported lower rates of subjective cognitive decline (7.8% versus 9.5%) and performed better on certain objective cognitive tests, meaning their minds stayed sharper at older ages.
“When searching for possible dementia prevention tools, we thought something as prevalent as coffee may be a promising dietary intervention—and our unique access to high quality data through studies that has been going on for more than 40 years allowed us to follow through on that idea,” said senior author Daniel Wang, MD at Mass General Brigham.
Similar patterns were observed among tea drinkers, while decaffeinated coffee did not show the same associations. This suggests that caffeine may be an important factor behind the observed brain-related benefits, although more research is needed to confirm the underlying mechanisms.
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Typically, an 18% association is nothing to write home about. In observational science, effects of 50% or higher are generally needed before scientists will feel comfortable saying they’ve discovered anything definitively.
However, when the sample size and incredible duration of the study are taken into account, such a relatively small association may seem more likely to suggest underlying truth. It helps that many other studies have associated coffee with better health and disease outcomes.
Preventing dementia early is especially important because current treatments are limited and generally provide only modest benefits after symptoms begin.
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Coffee and tea contain compounds such as polyphenols and caffeine, which are thought to support brain health. These substances may help reduce inflammation and limit cellular damage, both of which are linked to cognitive decline.
“We also compared people with different genetic predispositions to developing dementia and saw the same results—meaning coffee or caffeine is likely equally beneficial for people with high and low genetic risk of developing dementia,” said lead author Yu Zhang, PhD at Harvard Chan Medical School.
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