I'm taking a break from the usual futile political analysis for something that may actually help someone somewhere. You may have heard about this news when it was published in 2009:
[The] Florida ADRC study included 55 mice genetically altered to develop memory problems mimicking Alzheimer's disease as they aged. After behavioral tests confirmed the mice were exhibiting signs of memory impairment at age 18 to 19 months – about age 70 in human years – the researchers gave half the mice caffeine in their drinking water. The other half got plain water. The Alzheimer's mice received the equivalent of five 8-oz. cups of regular coffee a day. That's the same amount of caffeine – 500 milligrams — as contained in two cups of specialty coffees like Starbucks, or 14 cups of tea, or 20 soft drinks.
At the end of the two-month study, the caffeinated mice performed much better on tests measuring their memory and thinking skills. In fact, their memories were identical to normal aged mice without dementia. The Alzheimer's mice drinking plain water continued to do poorly on the tests.
(The PDF version of the study is here.)
My father has had progressing symptoms of dementia (not formally diagnosed as Alzheimer's, though that's been both our assumption and his doctors') for several years, and it had gotten to the point where he was so cognitively impaired that he couldn't recall the names of just about anyone other than immediate family and he was sleeping 20+ hours a day. On my most recent trip home my mother mentioned that he'd stopped drinking coffee, but while I was there we happened to give him a few cups—and we noticed an immediate and dramatic improvement in his awareness, alertness, short-term and long-term memory, level of engagement, and many other more subtle things as well. It was like having my old dad back.
In researching a possible connection I came across the 2009 study mentioned above, and since then we've been making sure he has at least 5 cups of coffee a day (which translates roughly into the 500mg dose mentioned in the study). It's continued to have a dramatic effect, which we see within a few minutes—"like watching a flower open in time-lapse", as my mother said—and lasts throughout the day as we supplement the coffee dosage. I wouldn't have believed it until I saw it happen for myself; after years of watching my father drift further and further away from us, it's nothing short of miraculous. Luckily for us he loves coffee (that's one of the things he seemed to have forgotten), but if that ever becomes a problem we'll try adding caffeine pills to his daily pharmaceutical regimen.
So if you know someone with symptoms of dementia, try giving them caffeine, and if you know someone who knows someone with symptoms of dementia, tell them to try giving that person caffeine. There are no guarantees that it will have the same effect it did with my dad, of course, but it's so simple and low-risk there's no reason not to try it. Seriously: tell everyone and anyone you know who might benefit from this, because it could literally change their lives.
If you do try this I'd be very interested to hear what kind of results you see, whether positive, neutral or negative.
(A little more on my father here, if you're interested.)
MORE INFO: Here's an excerpt from the abstract for a 2002 study:
Patients with AD [Alzheimer's disease] had an average daily caffeine intake of 73.9 ± 97.9 mg during the 20 years that preceded diagnosis of AD, whereas the controls had an average daily caffeine intake of 198.7 ± 135.7 mg during the corresponding 20 years of their lifetimes (P < 0.001, Wilcoxon signed ranks test). Using a logistic regression model, caffeine exposure during this period was found to be significantly inversely associated with AD (odds ratio=0.40, 95% confidence interval=0.25–0.67), whereas hypertension, diabetes, stroke, head trauma, smoking habits, alcohol consumption, non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs, vitamin E, gastric disorders, heart disease, education and family history of dementia were not statistically significantly associated with AD. Caffeine intake was associated with a significantly lower risk for AD, independently of other possible confounding variables.
So consuming 198.7 ± 135.7 mg of caffeine a day may help you avoid Alzheimer's.
The Distant Ocean 
Awesome and supberb!
One wonders if this possible treatment would have a positive effect on scrapies (mad cow)/prion diseases as well. There’s some pretty nasty evidence that our Alzheimer’s epidemic might, in fact, be a prion disease epidemic, or, at least, the two diseases simply coincidentally share eerily similar symptoms (e.g., plaques in the brain). In a slight hurry now, but I think I’ll search for this later if I’m not ninja’d here.
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Thanks for the suggestion and info John. My dad (career navy (Canadian) as it happens) is slipping into Alzheimers plus general dementia (what ever happened to “senility”?). Gonna suggest to my brother that he sees that there is caffeine intake and sees if it makes a difference. I drink a lot of strong coffee myself – wonder if this will this deflect the onset of this dread condition.
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I’m glad to hear that something is working for your family, and this certainly makes me feel better about my absurd levels of tea consumption.
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Harpfool, based on the study I mentioned in the addendum to the posting it looks like it might help, as long as you’re drinking about 4-5 cups a day. I know I’m going to up my usual caffeine intake on this basis (though I’m never going back to soft drinks).
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I drink a minimum of 8 cups of coffee to start my day, so I should be getting smarter, no?
BTW I love the picture you paint in the link of you and your dad going to Armed Forces Day. Reminds me of Navy Day when I was a kid.
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Um, but do keep in mind, when using caffine preventively, that it’s a stressor and could cause other long-term effects. I freely admit other diseases possible are still inferior to Alzheimer’s, but it bears mentioning. I wonder if merely any stimulant, taken after Alzheimer’s onset, would be effective, and if stimulants don’t prevent acquisition of the disease, but reduce its symptoms once it is present — which would mean one could live a healthy life then slam diet Mountain Dew like a fifteen–year-old once you start to fade.
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As NOoC notes, caffeine is not without fairly damaging side effects, especially for those with diabetes and high blood pressure (two populations already prone to vascular dementia).
My mother-in-law, anecdotally, drank tea like the daughter of the Welshwoman that she is. Her dementia never improved.
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…and if stimulants don’t prevent acquisition of the disease, but reduce its symptoms once it is present…
According to the second study I cited, caffeine does in fact correlate with a significantly lower risk of Alzheimer’s (and other factors–like hypertension, diabetes, stroke, head trauma, smoking habits, alcohol consumption, non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs, vitamin E, gastric disorders, heart disease, education and family history of dementia–do not).
As for negative effects, the Mayo Clinic lists the following for more than 500mg a day of caffeine:
Insomnia
Nervousness
Restlessness
Irritability
Stomach upset
Fast heartbeat
Muscle tremors
So based on the second study, 200-350mg as a preventative would be sufficient and would lessen these risks, if they’re a concern. But for someone with symptoms of dementia (and without specific contraindications), the possible benefits that I’ve now seen for myself far outweigh the risks of consuming 500mg a day–if nothing else, for long enough to determine if it’s having a positive effect.
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This is pleasantly reassuring information; thank you for the heads up. 🙂
I had already come across the link between caffeine and relief of mental deterioration, in the context of damage to the orexin system, which is responsible for certain essential neurophysiological responses/signalling.
It seems that the orexin system can be permanently damaged by gluten and/or starchy/high sugar carbohydrates ( not clear which, I seem to remember ), as a result of their effects on susceptible persons’ dopamine and/or other neuro-signalling chemical production ( or receptors, it’s a couple of years since I was reading up on this so have forgotten the details ).
The thing is that the study/ies you quote above do not seem to have investigated or controlled for obesity OR carbohydrate/cereal consumption as factors … and yet it is very possible that people who drink more coffee may also eat less carbohydrate/cereal than those who don’t drink much coffee, as coffee often seems to replace carbo-snacking or bingeing, either because it tends to reduce appetite or because it is a “compensatory” activity.
I wonder therefore whether the correlation between high coffee consumption in the 20 years ( previous to testing/study ) and “later or milder or non” onset of Alzheimers is actually the result of a different diet.
However it does appear from these studies and also from others’ experience of increasing caffeine intake that coffee/caffeine is something of an antidote, ( making a significant difference to symptoms ) helping to restore brain function by replacing orexin mechanisms with adrenalin system based ones. 🙂
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Agreed about diet, obesity, etc. I was impressed with the number of factors they did rule out as having no correlation, though–particularly family history of dementia (since I’ve got two grandmothers and now my father who’ve had it, so I was feeling like I had a big bullseye on my brain).
The two studies I cited are quite different, though: the first looks at caffeine as a treatment for existing dementia and the second looks at it as prevention. My father’s case fits the first study, and it seems pretty clearly not to be the case that secondary factors that correlate to caffeine intake are causing the improvement–it’s just the caffeine itself. I do wonder if his excessive sleeping is a symptom or a cause, though; if it’s the latter it may just be that the caffeine is helping by keeping him more awake, so his brain stays more active.
But it’s often hard to disentangle what exactly is causing the problem in situations like this. All we know for sure is that the caffeine is helping.
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As negative effects of any drug (or other ingested substance) go, that’s a pretty mild list.
A friend of mine who ended up a pathologist years ago in casual coversation stated that he saw so many relative benefits of caffeine in different studies that as long as one wasn’t getting jumpy, insomnia etc that he thought it was a great idea to give yourself regular doses. He seemed quite the fan.
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I wonder if a chocolate covered coffee bean would work as well as strong coffee. I take one if I’m tired and need extra pep. It works like a charm.
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Piggy-backing on Regina- what about black tea? I drink it as an alternative to coffee when I’m not studying something dense. With my body chemistry, black tea has shown less likely to produce the negative side-effects associated with coffee, and it doesn’t plunge my pH into the yellow.
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Based on both studies, the caffeine’s the thing, and the delivery mechanism doesn’t matter. And a chocolate-covered coffee bean sounds pretty good right now….
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“My dad (career navy (Canadian) as it happens) is slipping into Alzheimers plus general dementia (what ever happened to “senility”?).”
What happened to senility? There’s no money in it. If you just accept that many people simply decline as they grow older and gradually lose their mental and physical functions, then there’s no disease to “cure”. And thus no market for very high-priced drugs. But if you define senility as a “disease” then you can sell billions and billions of dollars of drugs to desperate people. While I’m not denying that short-term memory loss may be indicative of some disease, or that there is indeed something called Alzheimer’s, the fact is that it is also as normal a part of aging as vision and hearing loss, affects nearly everyone to some degree, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it unless you can figure out a way to avoid aging. They’ve diagnosed my mother with Alzheimer’s and prescribed expensive drugs for her, but all I’ve seen (after 8 years of taking care of her daily) is short-term memory loss and what I would call senility. She sleeps all the time, and I’m going to try the coffee thing, but it isn’t going to change the fact that she’s simply very old, frail and weak, and will never have the energy she used to have.
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