RESEARCHERS

RESEARCHERS FIND NEW POTENTIAL HEALTH BENEFITS FOR CAFFEINE

Researchers have found that caffeine can help manage stress and, potentially, prevent conditions such as depression and memory loss.

An international team of scientists from Portugal, the US and Brazil studied how caffeine could reduce the impact of stress on the brain. Associate Professor Rodrigo Cunha from Portugal’s University of Coimbra said his team fed mice caffeine in their drinking water and put some of the animals under stress. He said the caffeine had a calming effect on the mice.

Professor Cunha and his team found that caffeine blocks a stress-related chemical and prevented associated issues such as memory loss. “What caffeine is doing is not making the system work better; it is avoiding the system going into the wrong way of working,” he said. “So it is a prevention of deterioration, rather than an improvement.”

However, Professor Cunha also noted that humans had very different brains to mice and that further investigation was needed.

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