How Coffee and Sugar Boost Brain Power

Photo: shubert ciencia

If you thought that your morning coffee helped boost your performance in the morning, you were right! So long as you either take sugar in your coffee or you have a sugary snack with it, it truly does give you more brain power.

Photo: pallbo

In a study published in Human Psychopharmacology: Clinical and Experimental, researchers found that taken together, caffeine and sugar have a synergistic effect on each other, meaning that it is this enhanced effect on each other (rather than taking either alone) that can help in the areas of attention span and verbal memory.

Photo: shira gal

Researcher Dr J. Serra Grabulosa said: “The two substances improve cognitive performance by increasing the efficiency of the two areas of the brain responsible for sustained attention and working memory. The brain is more efficient under the combined effect of the two substances, since it needs fewer resources to produce the same level of performance than when volunteers took only caffeine, glucose or water.”

Photo: Benjah-bmm27

Coffee is traditionally considered a ‘wake me up’ and most of us feel we can’t even begin to start the day without it. Now that we know it has more than just the caffeine effect or at least that effect combined with glucose means our brains work more efficiently at attention and memory tasks, we can enjoy our coffee guilt free!

Sources: 1, 2