Age comes naturally. A commonly held misconception is that aging results in an inevitable loss of cognitive abilities and that nothing can be done to halt this decline. While certain areas of thinking do show a normal decline as we age, we can actually intervene and delay it.

Tea has been used for centuries, initially in China. It has been a concrete fact that tea plays an important role in Chinese culture and it made a name for itself as China’s all-time national drink. The interesting figure of Asians’ lower mortality rates and greater longevity versus the western population is much associated with their love for tea, claiming that tea aids their physical and cognitive abilities.

There have been various studies conducted over the years to support the premise that regular tea consumption of three (3) or more cups a day is found to have a beneficial impact on cognitive functioning and reduced hippocampal neuronal impairment through the neuro-protective effect of tea polyphenols.

Green Tea

One clinical study conducted by Dr. Kuriyama, which involved more than 1,000 Japanese respondents aged 70 or older, showed that regularly taking higher amounts of green tea brings a lower occurrence of cognitive deficiency compared with drinkers taking three or fewer cups per week. However, this finding does not include black tea.

In addition, further research indicates that green tea consumption might even lead to better cognitive performance in community-living older adults even among healthy subjects. No study has yet refuted this finding.

This new found benefit of tea creates a worldly interest as the strive for youth is prevalent nowadays and health complications are just around the corner. So, cheers for a better working memory as you age and live young with sips of your flavourful tea.

Green Tea
SOURCES

Guo S., Yan J., Yang T., et. al. (2007). Protective Effects of Green Tea Polyphenols in the 6-OHDA Rat Model of Parkinson’s Disease through Inhibition of ROS-NO Pathway. Biological Psychiatry, 62(12):1353-62. (Retrieved 03 March 2017). doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2007.04.020

Kuriyama S., Hozawa A., Ohmori K., et. al. (2006). Green tea consumption and cognitive function: a cross-sectional study from the Tsurugaya Project 1. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 83 (2):355–61. (Retrieved 03 March 2017) from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16469995

Mandel S., Amit T., Bar-Am, O., Youdim, M.B. (2007). Iron dysregulation in Alzheimer’s disease: multimodal brain permeable iron chelating drugs, possessing neuroprotective-neuro rescue and amyloid precursor protein-processing regulatory activities as therapeutic agents. Progress in Neurobiology, 82(6):348-60. (Retrieved 03 March 2017). doi:10.1016/j.pneurobio.2007.06.001

Ng, T., Feng, L., Niti, M., Kua, EH., Yap, KB. (2008). Tea consumption and cognitive impairment and decline in older Chinese adults. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 88(1), 224-231. (Retrieved 04 March 2017) from http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/88/1/224.full

Schmidt, A., et al. (2014). Green tea extract enhances parieto-frontal connectivity during working memory processing. Psychopharmacology (Berl), 231(19), 3879–3888. (Retrieved 03 March 2017). doi: 10.1007/s00213-014-3526-1