A new study has found that drinking more than three cups of coffee a day may helped protect older women's memories.
The study by researchers at the French National Institute of Medical Research suggest that coffee protects women from some of the age-related memory decline.
The French researchers tracked more than 7,000 men and women living in three French cities; they monitored their health and mental function and questioned them about their current and past eating and drinking habits, their friends, and their daily activities.
The researchers found that the more coffee drank, the better the effects seemed to be on women's memory functioning in particular, but men did not enjoy the same benefit.
Lead researcher Karen Ritchie says they used the information to identify the specific role caffeine played in these women's lives and they found that women who drank more than three cups of coffee per day, or its caffeine equivalent in tea, retained more of their verbal and to a lesser extent, visual memories over the four years.
These particular women displayed a 33 percent lower risk of having verbal memory declines and 18 percent lower risk of having visual and spatial memory declines, when compared to women who drank one cup or fewer per day.
The effect also appeared to be age related with women over 80 having more benefits from the caffeine beverages than those who were 10 to 15 years younger.
Ritchie's team say it is unclear whether current or former coffee consumption made any difference and why only women appeared to benefit.
Some research with mice has suggested that caffeine might block the buildup of proteins that lead to mental decline.
Dr. Ritchie says caffeine is a psychostimulant which appears to reduce cognitive decline in women and the results remained even after researchers adjusted for factors that could affect memory abilities, such as age, education, disability, depression, high blood pressure, medications, cardiovascular disease, and other chronic illnesses.
The researchers now plan to extend the research in order to see if caffeine delays the onset of dementia amongst the women.
According to the National Coffee Association the average American drinks one to two cups of coffee a day.