Since nearly half of all adults in the United States begin their day with a cup of coffee, a new study says that morning ritual can have the added protection off helping preserve your brain, and the darker the roast, the better, according to USA Today.
Canadian researchers from the Krembil Brain Institute in Toronto conducted tests using Starbucks VIA Instant light, dark, and decaffeinated dark roasts to test for the presence of compounds known as phenylindanes.
Scientists posited the phenylindanes are one of the keys to brain health once they are created during the roasting process.
The phenylindanes also create the bitter flavor inside of coffee.
The compounds prevent two protein fragments common in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, according to the researcher's report published in Frontiers in Neuroscience.
The dark roast had the highest amount of phenylindane, which makes it the best pick for brain health, but Mancini cautioned it's still uncertain how beneficial the compounds actually are.
Researchers said the longer roasting time produced more phenylindanes, which had the strongest effect on the brain in the first study which "investigated how phenylindanes interact with the proteins that are responsible for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's," according to Dr. Ross Mancini, a research fellow involved with the study.
The team of researchers said they planned to conduct more detailed investigations on the properties of phenylindanes and their effect once ingested in the body to see if they enter into the bloodstream or cross the blood-brain barrier.
Howard Bauchner, editor in chief of the medical journal JAMA and The JAMA Network, cautioned against taking drastic action over the study since a number of coffee studies are only association studies, which mean they don't show coffee as being the actual reason for their findings.
"It's interesting but are we suggesting that coffee is a cure? Absolutely not," researcher Donald Weaver, co-director of the Krembil Brain Institute, said in a statement.
Even though a number of studies have offered conflicting points of view on the caffeinated bean, a 2016 study from the University of Ulster in Coleraine in the United Kingdom found the benefits of moderate coffee consumption "clearly outweigh" the potential risks.
"Coffee consumption does seem to have some correlation to a decreased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease," notes Dr. Donald Weaver, who is co-director of the Krembil Brain Institute. "But we wanted to investigate why that is — which compounds are involved and how they may impact age-related cognitive decline."
-WN.com, Maureen Foody
Photo:
Creative Commons / https://www.flickr.com/photos/charlieontravel/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/charlieontravel/
