Caffeine is widely recognised as a pick me up or energy boost, there is now research that has found that caffeine can also alleviate stress induced memory problems.
According to a study published in the Journal of Alzheimers Disease, caffeine has been found to enhance cognitive performance and restore the memory performance in sleep deprived and older adults a finding that was also found in animal studies.
The research was conducted by a collaboration of bio-scientists, neuroscientists and medical researchers at the University of Coimbra in Portugal.
Caffeine was consumed in reportedly ‘chronic levels’ and was said to normalise cognitive performance that had been compromised as a result of stressful events. Additionally the study reported that caffeine helped reduce the memory dysfunctions and symptoms associated with other disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, type 2 diabetes, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and alcohol-induced amnesia. The authors of the study subsequently argued that caffeine could become a new therapeutic option for the management of memory problems.
These results shouldn’t encourage someone who is chronically stressed or has any of these disorders to suddenly overdose on caffeine as this can have some extremely detrimental effects to health and wellbeing, caffeine has been explored by other scientific investigation as instigating a quick response followed by a significant drop in energy and mood and has been associated depression like symptoms.
Caffeine as a stress management therapy is not recommended and these are the results of one study looking at its effects on the human and rodent memory that needs substantial further investigation before the true implications of these findings will be known.
