If a senior has three or more drinks of green tea per day, it may help prevent cognitive decline and related illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease.
A study done by the Graduate School of Medical Sciences at Japan’s Kanazawa University finds green tea may be a powerful tool for promoting brain health among the senior population. The researchers found that consuming three or more green teas a day is related to less cerebral white matter lesions found in scans. White matter lesions are notoriously associated with detrimental cognitive diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.
Green tea is beneficial for senior minds
The study, published in the NPJ journal Science of Food, associated with Nature, pulled data from the Japan Prospective Studies Collaboration for Ageing and Dementia across multiple regions of the country. From the MRI scans they drew from the databases, they sought to search for associations between coffee or green tea and white matter lesions.
The scientists found that older people who implement green tea into their daily routines are more likely to see benefits over the long term.
“This cross-sectional study found a significant association between lower cerebral white matter lesions and higher green tea consumption, but not coffee consumption, in older adults without dementia, even after adjusting for confounding factors,” the researchers write.
The scientists did not include those already suffering from a cognitive disease. In the healthy population, they classified individuals based on their consumption of coffee, tea, or both, including the frequency of their daily intake. Specifically, the team looked for changes in the hippocampal volume, or the size of the hippocampus. Alongside looking at the memory center of the brain, they also looked at overall brain size.
Naturally, the hippocampus shrinks with age. This in turn affects the quality of memory as one ages. However, hippocampus shrinkage could also be an outcome of a disease associated with mental deterioration.
The team found that the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties of green tea could play a role in protecting blood vessels and promoting brain health. However, it should be noted that they found no significant links between green tea and coffee consumption and hippocampal or total brain volume. To establish such findings, further in-depth studies involving controlled experiments and placebos over an extended duration are necessary.
“Our findings indicate that drinking green tea, especially three or more glasses per day, may help prevent dementia,” said the researchers. “Nevertheless, further prospective longitudinal studies and basic research are needed to validate our results.”