Your morning coffee is supposed to speed things up: wake you up, sharpen your focus and put a little pep in your step. But new research suggests that it could also do the opposite to your biological clock — potentially slowing the pace of aging.
Caffeine appears to trigger an ancient cellular energy system involved in growth, stress and DNA repair, new research says — processes very closely tied to aging. With science linking more health benefits to caffeine, from better heart health and a lower risk of dementia, this pathway might just be the key force behind it.
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The research, published in the scientific journal Microbial Cell, examined the effect of caffeine on fission yeast cells. These single-celled organisms share biological features with human cells and are often used to study basic cellular functions.
What did researchers find? Caffeine seems to activate a cellular system, AMPK, that helps cells sense when energy is low. The AMPK process "kicks in to help them cope" with depleted energy, said senior author Dr. Charalampos (Babis) Rallis, Reader in Genetics, Genomics and Fundamental Cell Biology at Queen Mary University of London, in a news release. Caffeine, Dr. Rallis explained, "helps flip that switch."
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