I'm sure you've all read by now this latest claim and research about caffeine and coffee.

http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=6700

Seems to me that it would be more practical and cost effective to just do a survey and ask those with AD, how much coffee, or any other caffeinated drinks or supplements they drink or take daily, for how long they have been drinking or taking and how much if any difference it has made.

So I thought I would take my own little survey here.

I have been ingesting caffeine in various ways most of my life, through very strong tea, hot and cold, soda's, coffee and supplements when I needed an extra boost of energy.

I haven't been diagnosed with AD, but I know without my daily dose of some sort of caffeine, I seem to have some sort of withdrawal symptoms.
Maybe psychological?

Hi Becky,

I used to drink coffee and lots of caffine and I found it to give me short buzz of concentration and the a big low needing another fix, ie big peaks and troughs.

The other problem whith caffinee is what i could do to your heart? Mine is weak and caffeene in excess may result in heart attack or stroke if blood pressure is increased.

I now take nutraceutical suppliments, in particular, Cognisure i have found most effective. This give me concentration in a slow and steady form with no peaks and troughs, over time. I have been able to give up coffee and energy drinks and take chilled water as hydration also helps with concentration. I feel fitter and healther plus i lost 14 pounds in weight!

Just my experiences, but I think caffine would have side effects, plus not being able to sleep at night! Cognisure/colostrinin already has proof of its effectiveness in cognative imparement.

I looked at the link.
I am not a scientist.
All I can say is that my great grandmother drank coffee everyday and had Alzheimer's. My ADLO drinks coffee everyday ALL day, and has Alzheimer's, as Alzheimer's Dementia Loved One denotes. But it takes more than two people to counter a study.
Maxwell House, Folger's, Starbucks, etc. should use the article on their labels.

Namaste.

I'll participate in the survey!

My DH who has AD has had tons of coffee during his lifetime and still loves coffee/tea/sodas.

I've done the same and so far, no signs of AD.

quote:

Originally posted by Rosie56:
Hi Becky,

I used to drink coffee and lots of caffine and I found it to give me short buzz of concentration and the a big low needing another fix, ie big peaks and troughs.

The other problem whith caffinee is what i could do to your heart? Mine is weak and caffeene in excess may result in heart attack or stroke if blood pressure is increased.

I now take nutraceutical suppliments, in particular, Cognisure i have found most effective. This give me concentration in a slow and steady form with no peaks and troughs, over time. I have been able to give up coffee and energy drinks and take chilled water as hydration also helps with concentration. I feel fitter and healther plus i lost 14 pounds in weight!

Just my experiences, but I think caffine would have side effects, plus not being able to sleep at night! Cognisure/colostrinin already has proof of its effectiveness in cognative imparement.

Rosie, I'm fairly new here but I've seen lots of posts about Cognisure that you've posted. I've never heard of it. Do you sell it? TKS.

MY hUBBY has drunk lots of coffee over the years and he has dementia..don't believe coffee drinking is the answer..i don't know if there is an answer..what about Cinnamon therapy? i have seen quite a bit about it..

what is cognisure? My DO gets it in his head almost every night that he wants to go "home". I have no idea where that is. he even threatens to go off walking to his "home". I have taken him to his "home place"..there is no house there anymore..that does not satisfy him..just runs me around the countryside like a chicken with it's head cut off..

Hi, ipoe. Cognisure is made from colostrum (a mammal's first milk after birth). From what I have found about this product, it appears that there is very little evidence that Cognisure will help AD patients. There's apparently been a little bit of research done with cell cultures, which of course may not have any relevance when it comes to what would happen in humans. There was also a study with rats and chickens, which are very poor models for AD.

It is purportedly immunosuppressive, which raises serious health risk issues.

There have been a handful of tiny clinical trials which appeared to produce promising results, but there were far too few patients, the trials were too short, and/or the assessment criteria were far too inadequate for the results to be at all reliable:

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.g...r.fcgi?artid=1894844

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12388930

http://surfer.pan.wroc.pl/jour...EFullText/47z608.pdf

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19262960

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15004324

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10608295


The original work was done with colostrum from sheep, but it appears that they may have switched to colostrum from cows, which means that the results from any studies done with sheep product isn't applicable.

Here’s an excerpt from an article at the BRNI website that talks about a patent they applied for that uses an ingredient that is in aspartame for AD treatment and also an ingredient in caffeine.

“Two new drug treatments for Alzheimer's disease, developed at the Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute (BRNI), have won patent protection and could be available for testing by volunteer patients in the next several months. Both treatments act on molecular targets discovered by BRNI scientists within memory signaling pathways of the brain.
On Nov. 23, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office approved a combination therapy developed by Daniel Alkon, M.D., scientific director of BRNI and Miao-Kun Sun, Ph.D., also of the BRNI research faculty. In animal tests, they discovered that a combination of two substances already in the human diet, methylxanthine (in tea), and phenylalanine, a carbonic anhydrase activator (in aspartame), increased the ability of research subjects to focus attention. "Carbonic anhydrase plays a crucial role in the formation of memories," Dr. Alkon said. "This compound could help focus attention, allowing us to fully concentrate on creating a memory." One of the earliest symptoms of Alzheimer's disease is the loss of short-term memory. By activating the carbonic anhydrase already present in the body, the drug could enhance the attention of patients.
Alkon and Sun first showed that carbonic anhydrase controls electrical brain activity in rats called theta rhythms (also seen in humans). These brain waves are seen when the rats are paying attention. They then identified drugs that enhance attention by activating carbonic anhydrase. The carbonic anhydrase activator, phenylalanine, is an ingredient in the commonly used artificial sweetner aspartame. Methylxanthines include a number of compounds with stimulant effects, such as caffeine and theophylline, ingredients of coffee and tea. Theophylline, previously used to treat asthma patients, increases the attention-enhancing effects of carbonic anhydrase activation.”

http://www.brni.org/news/press...ases/2004-11-30.html

I don't think that caffine works on me anymore. I've been drinking coffee since I was three or four. Somethign Mother got me started on. Made me feel grown-up. Good thing she didn't smoke!

And ... a new study which concludes that caffeine is not associated with preventing or delaying cognitive decline. And this one is reasonably compelling, since it involved twins:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=8764526

Coffee does little to protect the aging brain
by Joene Hendry
October 6, 2009

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Sorry coffee lovers -- downing a few cups of coffee throughout the day may spark alertness, but it's unlikely to protect the aging brain from mental decline or dementia, according to researchers from Finland.

Some studies have suggested that coffee has a protective effect on brain function in old age, while others have not shown this association.

One of the latest studies on the topic, which appears in the September issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found no association between coffee consumption and declining cognition or dementia scores in either men or women.

Dr. Venla S. Laitala, at the University of Helsinki, and colleagues assessed the coffee drinking habits, as well as other social, demographic, and health data, of a large population of twin pairs who were 50 years old on average.

At this point in time, 75 percent of the men and 83 percent of the women drank more than 3 cups of coffee a day. Only 4 of men and about 1 percent of women reported no daily coffee consumption.

When the group was just over 74 years on average, the investigators conducted telephone interviews in 2,606 of the study participants (48 percent women) to specifically screen for declining cognition and dementia.

They found that each year of increasing age was associated with declines in thinking abilities, regardless of gender.

However, in this study, middle-age coffee consumption was not protective against "cognitive decline or preventive against dementia," Laitala told Reuters Health in an email correspondence.

As expected, heart disease, diabetes and dissatisfaction with life were significantly associated with lower cognitive performance, the researchers report.

Therefore, Laitala's team suggests further investigations concentrate on the role heart disease, diabetes, and life satisfaction play in altered and age-related thinking and analytic abilities.

SOURCE: Venla S Laitala, Jaakko Kaprio, Markku Koskenvuo, Ismo Räihä, Juha O Rinne, and Karri Silventoinen. Coffee drinking in middle age is not associated with cognitive performance in old age. Am J Clin Nutr 2009 90: 640-646.

Background: The lack of effective disease-modifying treatments highlights the need for research on the prevention of dementia. It has been suggested that coffee has a protective effect on cognitive performance in old age, but only some of the previous studies have shown this association.

Objective: The aim of our study was to analyze the potential association between coffee drinking in middle age and cognitive performance in old age in a large sample of Finnish twins.

Design: Coffee consumption and other baseline variables of 2606 middle-aged Finnish twins were assessed in 1975 and 1981 by postal questionnaires. After the median follow-up of 28 y, their cognitive status was measured by using a validated telephone interview questionnaire.

Results: Coffee consumption was high and associated with educational level and several other baseline variables. After adjustment for these variables, linear regression analysis showed that coffee consumption was not an independent predictor of cognitive performance in old age (β = –0.12 test score units per coffee cup; 95% CI: –0.27, 0.04). No consistent differences in coffee consumption and cognitive score were observed within discordant twin pairs. Also, coffee drinking did not affect the risk of mild cognitive impairment or dementia.

Conclusions: Coffee drinking is associated with many sociodemographic and health variables, but our results do not support an independent role of coffee in the pathogenesis of cognitive decline and dementia.