A new study suggests there could be more to drinking a cup of coffee than a boost in energy. Drinking coffee can also protect you against developing Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.
“Coffee consumption appears to have some correlation with a reduced risk of developing Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease,” said the researcher. “But we wanted to explore why that is – which compounds are involved and how they might influence age-related cognitive decline.”
The research team chose to investigate three different types of coffee:light roast, dark roast and decaffeinated dark roast. “The caffeinated and de-caffeinated dark roasts both had identical potencies in our initial experimental testing,” said the researcher. “So we noticed early on that the protective effect was not due to caffeine.”
The researcher then identified a group of compounds known as phenylindans, which emerge as a result of the roasting process for coffee beans. Phenylindanes are unique in that they are the only compound studied in the study that prevents or rather inhibits beta-amyloid and tau, two protein fragments common in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, so that they don't clump. "So phenylindans are a double inhibitor, very interesting, we didn't expect that." says the researcher.
Since roasting leads to higher amounts of phenylindans, dark roast coffee appears to be more protective than light roast coffee.
