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A Cup Of Cognitive Health - Coffee Improves Learning, Memory, Protects Against Alzheimer’s, And More

A Cup Of Cognitive Health - Coffee Improves Learning, Memory, Protects Against Alzheimer’s, And More

12 min read JUN 02, 2025

How would your day improve if you could be more alert and focused?

Would your progress at work accelerate if your memory skills improved?
What about your home life, would your relationship with your partner, children, or friend(s) be better if your attention spans increased, allowing you to essentially be more present in the moment?

And, what about those ‘later in life’ moments? What if you could improve the health of your brain in a way that protected you from, or reduced your risk of, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and/or dementia?

Whether you’re the CEO of a large company, a farmer tending to crop and livestock, a stay-at-home mom wearing multiple hats, a doctor, teacher, machinist, or minister…no matter your profession or priorities in this life, the health of your brain is of monumental importance!

Without a healthy brain, we lose focus, we struggle to process information, our memory suffers, and all other areas of bodily function begin to suffer as well.

As your brain is essentially the CPU of your body, when cognitive health declines, the dominoes begin to fall.

Unfortunately, I think it’s safe to say most folks take the health of their brain for granted…until it declines.

Thankfully, we’re all coffee lovers here!

What does coffee have to do with improved focus, memory, and attention? And how does coffee relate to a decreased risk of horrific diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and dementia?

I’m glad you asked…

A Cup Of Cognitive Health

The experts have studied and researched this topic for decades, and the results become more and more clear as time passes and findings surface - drinking coffee is a great way to improve the health of your brain!

We all know that coffee is a powerful health enhancer, but when it comes to cognitive health, there are multiple ways this wonderfully delicious bean delivers.

But, how?

Ultimately, the primary reason coffee brings such benefits is due to its caffeine component.

Caffeine is a stimulant, of course, but it also has numerous antioxidant properties, and these combined components of your cup have proven to aid cognitive functioning in multiple ways.

1- Increased Blood Flow

When you drink caffeinated coffee, research shows this improves blood flow to your brain.

This occurs due to the fact that caffeine acts as a vasodilator, which opens up or widens your blood vessels allowing blood to flow more freely into your brain.

And, since your blood acts as one of the primary DoorDash and med delivery services in your body, transporting oxygen and nutrients from head to toe, when blood flow improves, these are more easily delivered to your brain cells.

Now, I don’t have to tell you that when you're thirsty or hungry, thinking, focusing, learning, memory, and more become increasingly difficult, right?

Obviously, this is because you’re likely in need of some hydration, a nutritious meal, or even a few deep breaths.

Well, in the case of coffee and cognitive health, as blood flow increases and oxygen/nutrition are easily delivered to your brain, better memory skills and an overall improvement in cognitive functioning follow as a result of this more efficiently delivered and needed ‘dose.’

2- Blocks Adenosine Receptors

Amplifying the above benefit, your cup of joe also serves to block adenosine receptors.

Adenosine is a naturally occurring nucleoside, a building block of your DNA and RNA, and one of its jobs is to act as a signal to regulate various processes in your body.

In doing so, adenosine commonly prevents the release of neurotransmitters such as dopamine and norepinephrine, both responsible for allowing you to feel excited.

As the caffeine content of coffee blocks adenosine receptors, this then leads to an increase in neuronal excitability.

Translation - the caffeine in your daily cup of coffee, as it blocks adenosine receptors, improves your mood, your reaction times, ability to focus (and how long you can pay attention), as well as your overall alertness.

3- Improves Reaction Time & More

As coffee serves you by blocking adenosine receptors, this benefit doubles by improving your reaction times.

Since adenosine typically promotes relaxation and sleep, once blocked you experience a greater level of alertness (due to increased levels of dopamine and norepinephrine), allowing your reaction times to improve.

I mean, I don’t know about you, but when I wake up in the morning, my reaction times and overall alertness are practically non-existent until I’ve had that first cup of smooth, bold cold brew (or piping hot java…you do you).

And here, we see the direct reason as to why this phenomenon is so common.

Even better, within this same process your attention span, processing speed, and actual ability to concentrate all receive welcomed boosts.

Then, another added adenosine blocking benefit involves decision making, where here, coffee’s ability to keep you alert, also improves your mood, keeps your mind sharp (focused), and therefore improves your ability to make decisions.

4- Improved Memory

Studies indicate that caffeine has a positive effect on memory, specifically enhancing long-term memory.

“We’ve always known that caffeine has cognitive-enhancing effects, but its particular effects on strengthening memories and making them resistant to forgetting has never been examined in detail in humans.”

Thankfully, this knowledge prompted Michael Yassa, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at John Hopkins University, to develop a double-blind study “to reveal a deeper interaction between memory and caffeine.”

The results of this study found the caffeine component of coffee to be beneficial in enhancing call pattern separation, or the process of forming distinct memories.

This aids your brain in the differentiation between inputs, ensuring there’s no interference between memories.

5- Improved Learning Capabilities

While we’ve detailed coffee-induced brain health boosts individually thus far, these same rewards and the processes involved in each are also, of course, beneficial in overall learning.

Much of learning involves each of the cognitive coffee benefits we’ve detailed thus far - focus, concentration, alertness, reaction times, and memory.

So, while we commonly think of cognitive health pertaining to long term outcomes, often linked to disease, coffee truly brings these boosts at all stages of life, specifically accelerating or enhancing your ability to learn (as a whole).

And, while each of these boosts are wholly invaluable throughout life, it indeed seems these benefits then compound in greater ways, protecting against disease.

Take a look…

The Neuroprotective Properties Of Coffee

The most common diseases related to the central nervous system, and more specifically, the brain, are Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

These are often categorized as neurodegenerative diseases as they result from damage and/or destruction to your brain and nervous system.

This damage generally occurs over a long period of time, and the effects aren’t typically seen until later in life.

Most experts find that age, genetics, environmental factors, medical history, and lifestyle are the greatest influencers of neurological damage, and a common thread running through each of these is oxidative stress.

Oxidative stress occurs when free radicals essentially outnumber antioxidants within the body.

Free radicals are unstable molecules formed during natural metabolic processes as well as through exposure to environmental factors (including lifestyle/habits, etc.).

Antioxidants serve your body by neutralizing free radicals, which in turn reduces the damage caused by oxidative stress.

In other words, free radicals cause oxidative stress, and oxidative stress causes damage all throughout the body, contributing to accelerated aging, disease, and deterioration.

But, the antioxidants found in coffee, specifically those antioxidant properties of caffeine, reduce oxidative stress, thereby protecting the brain from disease-causing damage.

So, let’s now examine some of the most common neurodegenerative diseases individually, looking at how coffee may reduce your risk of each one.

1- Alzheimer’s Disease

If you’ve ever watched a loved one suffer with a neurodegenerative disease, you know how truly brutal this can be.

And, Alzheimer’s is often described as one of the most impactful of all neurodegenerative conditions due to the nature of the disease as well as how it progresses.

I was in college when my grandma was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and I can vividly remember the heartache I felt for her when I would visit upon returning home from school for the weekend.

Oftentimes my dad would tell me “you really need to go visit your grandma, she misses you and wants to see you.”

But, knowing I’d just spent 2-3 hours talking and laughing with her, even sitting in silence together enjoying a bowl of her favorite popcorn while watching Lawrence Welk, hearing that she couldn’t remember our visit even minutes later, was heartbreaking.

The thing is, so many people face the same fate, even worse, unable to recall relationships, memories, faces, and love received from family and friends, all due to the effects of this horrific disease.

Alzheimer’s affects nearly 7 million Americans today, and this number is expected to reach more than 14 million in the next 35 years.

This disease is classified as a type of dementia, greatly affecting daily life by causing problems with memory, judgment, and other cognitive-related issues.

So then, how can coffee help?

We discussed coffee’s role in blocking adenosine receptors above, and many experts believe this is the greatest benefit regarding Alzheimer’s.

As coffee also protects against oxidative stress and the damage it can cause to the brain, this is another way the world’s favorite bean can reduce your risk of neurodegeneration, and thus Alzheimer’s.

Coffee’s antioxidant profile is also highly effective at reducing inflammation, and inflammation has been found to be “a key factor in the development of Alzheimer’s.”

Combine these preventative measures with the cognitive benefits we detailed in the above section, and you’ve got a powerful disease preventing brew!

2- Parkinson’s Disease

Coffee has also been shown to reduce the risk of Parkinson’s disease.

Parkinson’s disease, like Alzheimer’s, is a neurodegenerative condition, and this type of disease occurs as a result of damage to specific neurons within the brain tasked with coordination and muscle movement control.

Most experts believe that Parkinson’s is caused by low levels of dopamine.

And, it is thought that these levels are diminished due to a dying off of nerve cells within the brain responsible for muscle movement and the secretion of dopamine.

This is why symptoms of Parkinson’s include tremors, muscle stiffness, slowed movements, poor balance, loss of automatic movements, changes in speech, and even depression, anxiety, and difficulty sleeping.

How can coffee help?

In the case of Parkinson’s, the antioxidant properties of coffee serve to protect the brain from nerve cell damage and die off.

Then, one major benefit is the way coffee’s caffeine content works to block adenosine receptors, thereby ensuring dopamine levels remain high.

Of course, the anti-inflammatory benefits of coffee aid here as well, ensuring healthy brain cells and neural pathways.

Huntington’s disease is another neurodegenerative condition often associated with Parkinson’s disease.

The two are often spoken of together as they do have some symptoms that mirror one another; however, Huntington’s disease is thought to be entirely genetic.

Some have found the neurological benefits of coffee to provide a promising relief, even prevention, of this disease, but many believe the genetic roots of this condition trump any potential java benefits.

As of now, human studies have not fully proven coffee-induced benefits here, but many still find the brain-boosting rewards of coffee to provide at least some element of promise regarding this condition.

3- Dementia

Dementia is more of a general term, one used to describe a number of neurodegenerative diseases.

As we mentioned above, Alzheimer’s is a type of dementia.

But broadly speaking, dementia refers to brain disorders which cause “a gradual decline in cognitive abilities, memory, and behavior.”

Short term memory difficulties and changes in thinking skills are common symptoms of dementia which experts advise against ignoring, especially in elderly populations.

How can coffee help?

As with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, coffee’s caffeine content and antioxidant properties can protect against damage in the brain while also improving overall cognitive abilities.

But, while these benefits are a thankful boost for anyone, studies have revealed that women are most likely to have dementia, making the neuroprotective properties of coffee even more important for females.

How Many Cups For Cognitive Health?

When my daughter was young, she loved to help me in the kitchen, scooping out and dispensing a variety of measurements, all of which she routinely called “cups.”

“How many cups?” she’d ask, no matter whether we were measuring out teaspoons, quarter cups, tablespoons, or ounces.

Well, when it comes to coffee and cognitive health, specifically regarding this brew’s benefits pertaining to Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and dementia, these benefits prove to be best received with precise measurements (unlike my then 3 year old’s methods), necessitating the question: how many cups?

So, let’s close out with a list of recommendations derived from scientific research, those determined over time to provide the greatest benefit to cognitive health and neurodegenerative protection.

Alzheimer’s Disease

Typically, the experts recommend moderate coffee consumption for protection against Alzheimer’s.

And here, most find that 1-2 cups of coffee daily aligns with this description (moderate consumption).

Others have recommended the consumption of 3-5 cups of coffee daily, as this seems to amplify these benefits, and this number seems to come from studies finding that 1-2 cups of coffee daily protect against Alzheimer’s, but 2-4 cups of coffee enjoyed daily elevates these benefits.

Parkinson’s Disease

Concerning Parkinson’s Disease, scientists have found that 2-3 cups of coffee daily for men and 1-3 cups of coffee daily for women may provide the best protective benefits.

However, some have even suggested consuming up to 5 cups of coffee daily for the best outcomes related to Parkinson’s.

Dementia

Like Alzheimer’s disease, most researchers believe consuming 1-2 cups of coffee daily serves as a protective measure against dementia, with some finding that 2-4 cups amplify this effect.

However, in the case of dementia, it is important to note that scientists have found consuming 6 cups of coffee or more daily may actually increase the risk of this neurodegenerative disease.

Check out Lifeboost Coffee Grata Medium Roast .

Medical Disclaimer
This content is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical advice or to take the place of such advice or treatment from a personal physician. All readers/viewers of this content are advised to consult their doctors or qualified health professionals regarding specific health questions. Neither Dr. Charles Livingston nor the publisher of this content takes responsibility for possible health consequences of any person or persons reading or following the information in this educational content. All viewers of this content, especially those taking prescription or over-the-counter medications, should consult their physicians before beginning any nutrition, supplement or lifestyle program.

Becky Livingston Vance Content writer

Becky is a mother, educator, and content writer for Lifeboost Coffee. She has had three years’ experience as a writer, and in that time she has enjoyed creatively composing articles and ebooks covering the topics of coffee, health and fitness, education, recipes, and relationships.