Want to Keep a Clear Mind in Old Age?

We've become accustomed to reading studies praising coffee every now and then. Most of these studies, however, always focus on the same health benefits found in your espresso or latte: primarily the prevention of heart disease and protection against several types of cancer.

A new study, however, has found that caffeine in coffee has an additional benefit that can only be seen in the very long term. The study discovered that caffeine is one of 24 compounds that enhance the brain's ability to defend against dementia.

Dementia in old age, which in most cases is caused by Alzheimer's disease, is one of the most painful and difficult phenomena of advanced age. In an era where the world population is aging, more and more resources are dedicated to researching the causes of dementia and ways to prevent it. One of these efforts was a study by Indiana University, USA, where more than 1200 different compounds were examined to identify which of them boost the production of the enzyme NMNAT2 in the brain. The enzyme, discovered at Indiana University last year, has been proven to protect neurons in the brain from stress and has the potential to prevent the formation of damaged proteins in the brain, a phenomenon associated with the development of diseases causing dementia.

"This research can help advance efforts to develop drugs that increase this enzyme level in the brain, creating a 'chemical barrier' against the harmful effects of diseases like Alzheimer's," says Professor Hui-Chen Lu, who led the study. Caffeine will undoubtedly be an important player in these drugs.

After identifying caffeine's protective feature, researchers conducted an experiment in which they administered caffeine to genetically modified mice so that their brains produced less of the NMNAT2 enzyme than usual. After receiving the caffeine, however, they began producing the enzyme at normal levels.