Drinking 2-3 cups of coffee a day tied to lower dementia risk

[recursivecaveat]

The abstract mentions controls, but unfortunately I can't access the actual paper to see what they are. This seems really hard to isolate. Loneliness, inactivity, and depression are huge risk factors for dementia. Drinking caffeine in the morning seems like a really good proxy for whether an individual has somewhere to be that day. Definitely not 100% of course, but highly correlated.

[opan]

>Drinking caffeine in the morning seems like a really good proxy for whether an individual has somewhere to be that day.

Anecdotally, on a Sunday morning with 8 hours of sleep and no plans, I'm still going to caffeinate at least once, probably with breakfast. If I'm trying to stay up a long time or am sleep deprived I may caffeinate 2 or 3 times that day. I don't typically take a whole day off of caffeine based on my plans. If I have a doctor's appointment and am not supposed to eat/drink, I'll still do it later when I get back home.

[perrygeo]

The proposed mechanism is polyphenols.

Historically, you'd get your polyphenols from your garden or wild gathering. But we know that industrial crops (even organic grown) have extremely low polyphenol content compared to their wild counterparts. So coffee remains as one of the few strong sources you can buy in a grocery store.

Hypothesis: Polyphenols from other sources would be just as protective as coffee.

[tim333]

It must be hard to differentiate:

Hypothesis 1: Polyphenols

Hypothesis 2: 2-3 coffees a day is a symptom of a normal life

You get that kind of issue coming up a lot in this sort of research. Like people who don't drink at all are probably more likely to drop dead in the next year than moderate drinkers. Not because drink protects but because people critically ill tend not to drink.

[moritzwarhier]

> Coffee and tea contain bioactive ingredients like polyphenols and caffeine

There are also studies that nicotine lowers dementia risk.

Since caffeine and nicotine are both stimulants related to similar receptors, I wouldn't discount this other mechanism.

I'm not saying anything about general healthiness of caffeine though.

[butlike]

That. Is. Fascinating. How'd you hear about the industrial crops having low polyphenol content?

[jrootabega]

Translating from normie, sounds like 30-50g of beans, assuming a "cup" is 8 floz. and the water:coffee ratio is 15:1. Assuming Arabica, that's 450-750mg of caffeine.

[jrootabega]

I should heavily qualify this by saying that I don't think the study (which I have no access to) measured it this precisely or specifically. I think it was just people reporting roughly how many "cups" per day they drank over 40+ years. I guess I just get annoyed when I see "cups" as a unit of coffee science/health.

[asyx]

Doing the lords work here. Thanks.

[nabbed]

I might be in a higher risk group then: I can drink at most 1 coffee per morning (I love coffee but coffee doesn't love me). In addition, the only anti-allergy pill that works for me is a first generation allergy medicine (chlorpheniramine) that's strongly associated with increased chance of dementia. I could stop taking chlorpheniramine, but then my nose would keep me up at night, and poor sleep is also associated with increased chance of dementia.

So I am hoping there are confounding factors in all these studies, such that it's not coffee per se that helps with dementia but rather something along the lines of "the type of person who desires coffee is less likely to develop dementia".

[banach]

In case you haven't read it, I can recommend https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/12216/my-house-killing... for ideas on what is causing your allergy.

[zafka]

I am curious(because I get stuffed up a lot also) Do you know what is causing your stuffiness?

[throwawaytea]

I know HN hates anecdotal health advice.. especially natural stuff.. but order yourself some Stinging Nettle powder or grounds, loose, and make yourself a decently strong tea everyday. I personally drink a liter, but I've had friends helped by just one cup daily. I had strong seasonal allergies that for 3-5 months of the year would leave me in sneezing fits, or drooling liquid out of my nose, or just with a constant itch in my nose. After years of stinging nettle drinking, on the worst days I have small symptoms. A skeptical friend was finally convinced when we went hiking in an area that started to even bother him, someone who had almost no allergies ever, yet I had half of his reaction.. and he had known how sensitive I was prior.

Obviously there are many types of allergies and who knows if it works for you.. but worth a shot.

[GlibMonkeyDeath]

I can't get access to the full article either to see how they adjusted for confounding (which they said they did) - but I thought this tidbit was interesting:

https://www.massgeneralbrigham.org/en/about/newsroom/press-r...

“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

That seems like it indicates there is some real, independent signal here. Off to make some coffee!

[Rebelgecko]

I don't have access to the full story, but I'm curious if it answers these naive questions:

1. Why did they source men and women from separate studies?

2. How can they tell the study's results aren't equivalent to "people with dementia are bad at logging their caffeine intake reliably"?

[butterlettuce]

I really don’t appreciate BigCoffee pushing their anxiety juice on me.

Ever since I stopped drinking that mini-panic-attack potion, my heart hasn’t skipped a beat, my sleep has been great and I don’t feel tired all the time.

Hopefully one day people wake up (haha) and dump it the way we’ve dumped cigarettes.

[PostOnce]

To each his own, but also:

All things in moderation; I drink a cup or two a day, but only before lunch, never after, and I eat beforehand.

If I don't eat, or I have too many coffees together, I get the anxiety you mention.

If I have coffee after lunch, it affects my sleep.

But, accounting for those things and mitigating them, I now not only get the benefit of coffee (if there is one), I get the social benefit of having coffee with people.

[Jonovono]

It’s so dumb. It literally creates the problem just so it can solve it (same as cigarettes). People say they need coffee for energy. If you stopped drinking coffee you would have steady energy throughout the entire day !!

[cushpush]

Who funded this research? Big Coffee?

[Bender]

I too was curious because I could not access the funding section so I asked Gemini since I figured it would have access and it said:

- According to the funding and disclosure sections of the article, the research was primarily funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

and then

- The Nurses’ Health Study (NHS): Supported by grants from the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

- The Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS): Supported by grants from the NCI and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI).

- Specific Grants: Additional funding for the analysis of cognitive decline and dementia outcomes often comes from the National Institute on Aging (NIA).

All the coffee I drink was freeze dried several years ago before prices went up.

[ChrisArchitect]

[dupe] Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46953114

[oriettaxx]

and the other way around? dementia tied to stop drinking coffee after a full life with coffee?

[htx80nerd]

very likely just the caffeine.

[achandlerwhite]

correlation does not equal causation

[acheron]

Makes you wonder why we even have research universities when their results can be so easily DESTROYED with FACTS and LOGIC by HN’s top JavaScript developers and vibe coders.

[iberator]

unless it does. I hate when people say that without having 0 clue how science works.