Coffee is wonderful, tea is grand, and soda (at least
low-calorie) is great. Not only does the caffeine make mornings easier to
handle, new research shows that your memory gets a boost too. Isn’t life
wonderful?
Researchers at Johns Hopkins recently published the
results of their study on memory and caffeine in the peer-reviewed journal Nature
Neuroscience. They found that caffeine can improve long-term memory, at
least for 24 hours.
The research study was very cleverly designed. 20
volunteer were divided into two groups. These volunteers did not consume caffeinated
foods or beverages in their normal lives. Half of the participants received a
caffeine pill and the other half received a placebo (sugar pill). Five minutes
later, both groups viewed a series of images. The next day, each volunteer
viewed a series of images and indicated which images were identical or similar
with yesterday’s images and which were new.
During the testing, neither the volunteers nor the
testers knew which people received caffeine pills and which received placebos.
Only after the tests were completed did the researchers learn which volunteers
actually consumed caffeine. This kept
the researchers from unintentionally skewing the results.
Volunteers who received caffeine were better able to
identify images which were similar to previous images, compared to
non-caffeinated volunteers. The tests were performed with caffeine equivalent
to half a cup of coffee and again with caffeine equivalent to a whole cup of
coffee. The results were similar, with slightly better memory performance from
the higher caffeine group.
Caffeine has been previously shown to help fight cancer.
Now we learn that it helps memory, too. That should allow me to count my Keurig
as a medical device, right?
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