It is interesting to see these studies go back and forward over what’s good and not good for us, for a long time now one week there has been a study saying that tea is better for us and the next week coffee is better for us. Now I don’t drink coffee for the ‘health benefits’, nor do the ‘disadvantages’ discourage me, I drink it because I enjoy it. However while watching the news headlines tonight this one caught my eye, there have been studies carried out which suggest that drinking at least a cup of coffee per day may reduce the risk of contracting Alzheimer’s.

The story on the news didn’t give away much information as to why there is this connection but I found a link to a news article here: Daily Caffeine ‘Protects Brain’ if you care to have a read. From what I can gather, the gist of the research suggests that there is a link between Cholesterol and Alzheimer’s, the link here is that a higher Cholesterol level can make the body’s ‘blood brain barrier’ (a natural filter to stop all the nasties getting to our brain) leaky. A leaky filter could trigger or contribute to the disease.

The significant thing here seems to be that caffeine seems to block several of the things that make the barrier leaky. Quantities as small as a normal cup of coffee a day in the studies have been found to have results. Now the article on the news did mention that this applies to espresso coffee, so I wouldn’t go getting too excited over instant coffee as none of us know what really goes into that stuff – thats a whole other topic for me to rant about. But this link seems quite interesting to me and while it may just be another one of ‘those’ stories, I am still going to have my coffee fix each day know knowing that maybe its not necessarily such a bad thing.