Coffee may help older women retain memories

Drinking more than 3 cups of coffee or tea a day can help older women retain their memories.

Dr. Ritchie and others of the French National Health and Medical Research Center have completed a large study. The researchers asked about 7000 average 74-year-old men and women in Bordeaux, Dijon and Montpellier about how many cups of coffee and tea they drank each day, as well as drugs and Coca-Cola with small amounts of caffeine. The subjects took several mental skills tests. The test consists of a series of word memory tests. Importantly, the experimental group also had these subjects undergo repeated mental skills tests in the second and fourth years.

The research results show the following characteristics. First, compared with older women who drank one cup of coffee or tea a day, test scores of older women who drank more than three cups of coffee or tea a day rarely decreased after 2-4 years; second, this result was particularly evident in women's oral memory; and third, coffee does not seem to affect women's risk of developing dementia (that is, Alzheimer's disease). The researchers say this may be due to the fact that the research time is too short to have a significant effect.

At the same time, researchers such as Dr. Ritchie also noted that coffee had no significant effect on men's scores on multi-year mental skills tests. The researchers speculate that coffee may help women remember because they are more sensitive to caffeine.