Drinking up to five cups of tea a day can lower your risk of stroke and dementia.

People who drink that amount of tea—or make up the amount with a couple of cups of coffee—reduce their risk by up to 32 percent compared to non-drinkers.

Those who drink up to three cups of coffee or five cups of tea had the greatest protection, say researchers from Tianjin Medical University in China.

The researchers tracked the health of 365,682 participants in the UK Biobank survey, and 5,000 developed dementia and 10,000 suffered a stroke during the 14 years of the study. The risk was lowest in those who drank up to three cups of coffee or five cups of tea or up to six cups of coffee and tea.

(Source: PLOS Medicine, 2021; 18: e1003830)

Forgetful?  A little gentle exercise every day can help improve your memory.

Light workouts create new connections in the areas of the brain, such as the hippocampus, that are responsible for memory.

Exercise, such as walking, yoga and tai chi, may not make you sweat, but it is making a difference to your brain, say researchers from the University of California at Irvine.  They scanned the brains of 36 young adults before and after 10 minutes of light exercise and discovered new connections between the hippocampus and cortical regions of the brain were already being created.

The hippocampus is vital for memory recall and is one of the first areas to deteriorate with Alzheimer’s disease.

It could be that light exercise, which everyone of us can do, can also reduce the risk of cognitive decline as we get older.

(Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2018; 201805668)