before we actually get into some of the findings and some of the associated health benefits. let's talk about caffeine and antioxidants briefly here so coffee contains caffeine as a lot of us know and the following antioxidants chlorogenic acid and caffeic acid. So we're going to briefly talk about these in more detail these oftentimes mediate health effects so caffeine and antioxidants. So I'm going to briefly talk about the mechanism of caffeine but the antioxidants often have very complex mechanisms.

We won't talk about it in this blog, so caffeine can actually cross the blood-brain barrier enter the brain, and have effects on neurons in our brain. so here is a neuron here so caffeine binds to adenosine receptors so it actually binds to several adenosine receptors a1 a2a a2b and a3 a2a it's binding to a2a is actually what mediates its stimulant effects and this leads to the release of excitatory neurotransmitters and this is going to become important when we talk about certain health effects later on. 

So again caffeine can cross the blood-brain barrier enter the brain and bind to adenosine receptors and particularly h2a is what we see with its stimulatory effects and it oftentimes leads to increased excitatory neurotransmitters. so we're going to first talk about neurological health benefits that have been found to be associated with coffee. So, coffee consumption may reduce the risk of some neurological diseases including Parkinson's disease as was found in this article entitled meta-analysis of coffee drinking cigarette smoking. And the risk of Parkinson's disease and there may be a small reduction in risk of Alzheimer's disease with coffee consumption as well one mouse model actually demonstrated reduced beta-amyloid. 

so, beta-amyloid is important in the pathogenesis or pathophysiology of Alzheimer's disease and these two articles both show some reduction in risk of Alzheimer's disease with coffee consumption or an associated reduction in risk so the two articles here are entitled caffeine protects Alzheimer's mice against cognitive impairment and reduces brain beta amyloid production so this was mentioned here and then the other article is alzheimer's disease and coffee a quantitative review so these are the two articles.

so, again this is a mouse model so we can't really say too much about this but there has been some evidence to show an association between coffee consumption and a reduced risk of Alzheimer's disease so also interesting now the next health benefits we're going to talk about with

regards to coffee consumption are in relation to mortality so in this review entitled coffee consumption and health umbrella review of meta-analyses of multiple

health outcomes we're going to talk about a lot of

different important health benefits that

have been found to be associated with

coffee consumption and a lot of them

come from

this review now it has been shown that

high coffee consumption

generally speaking three to seven cups

of coffee per day

is associated with a reduced risk of

all-cause mortality again

this is association so it doesn't imply

causation but we see there's an

association here

so all-cause mortality it could be

mortality from

a wide variety of causes

this appears to be a dose-dependent

effect so as

coffee consumption increases the

risk of all-cause mortality decreases so

there's a dose-dependent effect

but it seems to slow down as

the amount of coffee consumption

increases

now the effect appears independent of

caffeine content so very interesting

here

decaffeinated coffee also showed similar

findings so an individual

increases their consumption of

decaffeinated coffee their

risk of all-cause mortality decreases as

well

now coffee consumption is also

associated with decreased incidence

of and all-cause mortality from the

following cardiovascular disease

coronary heart disease

and cerebrovascular disease and from a

lot of the studies that were mentioned

in this article it seemed that three

cups of coffee per day

was probably the best dosing with

smaller decreases and smaller associated

benefits with

increasing doses of coffee now it was

also interesting that women had slightly

higher associated benefits

and there was also demonstrated

associated benefits after heart attack

as well so even if

an individual did have coronary heart

disease and they had a heart attack or

myocardial infarction

having coffee or consuming three cups of coffee per day after their heart attack it seemed to also have some associated benefits as well so again very interesting very important high coffee consumption seems to reduce or is associated with a reduced risk of all-cause mortality and is also associated with a decreased incidence