Drinking a lot of coffee and tea in middle and older age can prevent frailty, a study suggests.
Researchers interviewed 12,500 people over 50 in Singapore about their coffee and tea drinking habits and followed them for twenty years.
They found that those who drank four cups of coffee or more every day were about half as likely to be physically frail in their 70s.
And compared to non-daily tea drinkers, daily drinkers of black or green tea were about 18 percent less likely to develop frailty later on.
When the study broke down the tea by type, daily green tea drinkers benefited more, with the odds of frailty being 19 percent lower, compared to 12 percent lower odds for black tea drinkers.
Drinking lots of coffee and tea in middle age and older age may prevent frailty, a study suggests (stock)
However, the study did not look at how adding milk, sugar or artificial sweeteners to coffee or tea changed these health benefits.
The researchers did not claim to be able to prove cause and effect, but they believe caffeine may combine with other antioxidants in coffee and tea to slow the breakdown of cells and prevent physical health problems such as heart disease and certain cancers, which can lead to vulnerability. can lead.
To partly test this idea, they also looked at total caffeine consumption, which included not only coffee and tea, but also soft drinks and chocolate.
Compared to those who consumed 67.6 milligrams (mg) of caffeine per day or less, those who consumed the highest amount, 223-910.4 mg per day, were about 23 percent less likely to be frail.
Frailty is a common condition in older adults and its symptoms can include decreased energy, muscle loss, weakness and slowness. In addition to being a possible sign of other health problems, frailty can make daily life more difficult and put older people at greater risk of falls.
Researchers interviewed 12,583 research volunteers between 1993 and 1998 about their coffee and tea drinking habits. Chinese health study in Singapore (SCHS).
This study has followed more than 60,000 Chinese men and women every five to six years since the 1990s in an effort to disentangle the “dietary, genetic and environmental determinants of cancer and other chronic diseases in Singapore”.
For the current study, researchers used health data from the third follow-up period of the SCHS, from 2014 to 2017. In the initial period, the average age of participants was 53 years, and in the second period it was 73 years.
They found that, compared to adults who did not drink coffee daily, participants who drank four cups of coffee or more every day during midlife (the early period) were about half as likely to be physically frail at a later date.
Based on the studies, it’s difficult to draw conclusions about the health benefits of caffeine-free options.
“At the time of recruitment, decaffeinated coffee and tea were rarely consumed in our study population,” the researchers write. ‘It was therefore assumed that all coffee and tea the participants consumed were caffeinated.’
a 2023 study of American adults support the idea that benefits are linked to caffeine. That study found a reduced risk of frailty in people who drank caffeinated coffee, but not in those who drank decaffeinated coffee.
Caffeine may vary slightly depending on the method of preparation, but a 250 ml cup of brewed coffee contains approximately 96 mg of caffeine, while the same volume of black tea contains approximately 47 mg and a cup of green tea contains approximately 28 mg. A 12-ounce can of Coca Cola contains 34 mg caffeine, and a can of Diet Coke has 46 mg.
To ensure that the results actually reflected the effects of caffeinated drinks, participants were asked about a wide range of other factors at the first time point.
These include their demographic characteristics, lifestyle factors such as smoking and sleep habits, history of health problems, diet, alcohol consumption and exercise. Statistical analysis controlled for these potentially complicating and confounding factors.
Nearly 70 percent of the study population drank coffee every day, so the researchers divided them by the number of cups per day they drank (less than one, one, two to three, and four or more).
But because more than 36 percent of participants did not drink tea daily, tea consumption was categorized as never, monthly, weekly and daily.
During the period 2014-2017, research volunteers were evaluated for vulnerability levels. These assessments took into account weight loss, exhaustion, sluggishness and weakness. Currently, 14.8 percent of study participants qualified as vulnerable.
The study authors write: ‘Compared to their non-frail counterparts, participants who were physically frail at the third follow-up were more likely to be older at the time of assessment; they were also more likely to have a history of comorbidities, to have smoked, to have a higher body mass index in middle age, and to be less likely to be physically active.”