Two to three cups of coffee daily cuts dementia risk by about 80 percent, while decaf shows no benefit. Caffeine is the active ingredient, but drinking it late disrupts sleep, which harms the brain. Johnson avoids it anyway, calling it a physiological roller coaster.
If you're addicted to coffee, I actually have good news. A recent study showed that Those who drank two to three cups of coffee per day were associated with an 80% lower risk of dementia. You wonk. That's great, but I drink tea. Well, people who drank one to two cups of tea per day also showed a similar association with cognitive health. However, in this particular study, decaf drinkers showed no significant association. This suggests that caffeine may be the key driver of these neuroprotective effects. But here's the catch. Caffeine has a five to six hour half life. So a cup of coffee at 3pm leaves half a cup of coffee in your system at 9pm that lingering caffeine wrecks your sleep, and poor sleep has tons of negative effects on cognitive health. Despite the benefits of caffeine, I choose to not have it. For me, it creates a physiological roller coaster. After three days, I'm addicted. If you're going to have multiple cups of coffee or tea, try to consume them earlier in the day. While caffeine may support the brain, interfering with sleep hurts it.
