Drinking coffee has these benefits for the elderly

Drinking coffee has been found to have many beneficial health effects, and a new study has found that it may also improve reaction time in older adults.

In the study, presented April 5 at the annual meeting of the Society for Cognitive Neuroscience, scientists examined the effects of caffeine on a range of cognitive abilities in healthy older adults.

The ultimate goal of the study is to investigate what role caffeine could play in treating Alzheimer's disease, says study leader Kanchan Sharma, a neurologist at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom.

It is understood that some current treatments for dementia are implemented by improving the individual's attention, and caffeine is also believed to be able to improve people's attention, but it has not yet been confirmed by research.

To study the effects of caffeine on attention, Sharma and his team tested 38 adults aged between 55 and 91.

The participants first took some tests to measure various aspects of attention, and then the researchers asked them to stop consuming caffeine for a week. After a week, one group of participants was given a cup of coffee containing 100 mg of caffeine, while the other group drank decaffeinated coffee, and then the researchers tested them again. On the second day, the coffees of the two groups of participants were switched to serve as their own controls.

The researchers found that after drinking caffeinated coffee, participants' average reaction times improved. They also found that caffeine improved participants' performance on a "Stroop test" (where, for example, the word "green" is written in yellow and participants are asked to name the color of the word).

However, drinking coffee did not improve individuals' speed of action, that is, how quickly they pressed a button after seeing it pop up.

Sharma also mentioned that the improvement observed by the researchers in the experiment was relatively small. But for people with cognitive impairment, caffeine may have a greater impact because these people have a lower baseline. Sharma plans to test the effect of caffeine on patients with cognitive impairment such as dementia in future studies. (Internship translation: Chen Lurong review: Su Jiaorong)