Unsweetened Coffee Is Tied to Lower Dementia Risk

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Today’s Health Upgrade

Beyond The Headline
The Blood Measure That Doesn’t Work Like an Aging Score

Blood NAD⁺ tests are sold as a window into aging: the idea is that your levels fall over time, but if you take the right supplements, they rise and help you age better.

A new study tested the premise behind that pitch.

Researchers measured whole-blood NAD⁺ across seven groups that included younger and older adults, elite athletes, a longevity cohort, and people completing diet or exercise programs.

To many people's surprise, whole-blood NAD⁺ showed no meaningful difference with age and didn't respond to exercise or dieting. 

It did rise when people took nicotinamide riboside, a common NAD⁺ booster. The finding stands out because members of the same team had earlier reported that higher NAD⁺ tracked with healthier aging, and this more rigorous follow-up didn't show that connection.

And the measurement method wasn't broken. The test was sensitive enough to catch the rise from supplements, yet none of the attributes associated with aging moved the number at all.

The findings don't show that NAD⁺ remains stable everywhere in the body, and they don't tell us whether NAD supplements provide any health benefit. Nicotinamide riboside raised blood NAD⁺, but raising the number and improving health are separate questions.

Right now, a blood test only shows whether a supplement raises NAD⁺ in your blood.

Based on this study, it cannot tell you how quickly you're aging or whether you've restored NAD⁺ elsewhere in your body. That alone is reason to be skeptical of any blood NAD⁺ test sold as an aging score, and a reminder that moving a number in your bloodstream is not the same as doing anything for your health.

Together With Cometeer
Is Your Coffee Doing More Than Waking You Up?

You already know your morning cup perks you up. But research suggests it may also support a healthier brain as you age, as long as you drink it the right way.

In one of the largest studies of its kind, researchers followed more than 200,000 adults for about nine years to see whether coffee was associated with neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's and dementia. 

Unlike many studies, they didn't just count cups. They looked at how people took their coffee, focusing on sweetened, unsweetened, caffeinated, or decaf.

People who drank about 3 cups of unsweetened, caffeinated coffee had roughly a 25% lower risk of dementia and a 29% lower risk of Parkinson's compared to non-coffee drinkers. 

Neurodegenerative deaths trended lower too, though that result wasn't strong enough to call conclusive.

Researchers believe coffee's bioactive compounds — caffeine, chlorogenic acids, and polyphenols — have neuroprotective effects, helping reduce inflammation and oxidative stress.

However, decaf coffee didn’t show a protective link, which means caffeine likely plays an important role. 

But here’s the catch: once sugar was added, the association between coffee and brain protection vanished, and sweetened coffee showed no significant benefit.

While it’s not conclusive and this is just an association study, added sugar may work against those benefits. Or, it could be that people who add more sugar to their coffee also have other behaviors that could contribute to neurodegenerative disease. 

If you enjoy coffee, this is one more reason to keep sipping, and your best bet is to drink black and caffeinated, and up to three cups a day. 

If you find that you need sugar or flavored syrups, the solution might just be finding a better-tasting coffee. 

Pods run weak in flavor and oftentimes have less caffeine. And plenty of coffee just tastes bad, so the addition of sugar and cream goes on autopilot.

That's why we love Cometeer. It’s the easiest way to take your coffee straight and get the associated health benefits without needing to figure out how to make a cup more enjoyable.

Cometeer is the easiest way to get coffee from the best roasters in the world, like Onyx and Intelligentsia, brewed at 10x strength on a system built at MIT to preserve flavor and nutrition. No machine. No grinding. Ready in no time. 

The coffee was so impressive that the former president of Nespresso tried it and immediately invested. And after drinking it, we get the response. 

When you drink great coffee, the sugar habit dies. Not because you're being disciplined. Because you stop wanting it.

As a Pump Club reader, you get $20 OFF your first order of Cometeer. 

If you love coffee, the research suggests you have a good reason to be addicted, but you don’t want to add much to the drink. And Cometeer makes it easier to enjoy your coffee the right way. 

Better Questions, Better Solutions
How To Stop Dreading The Thing You Need

There's a task you keep avoiding. The workout, the request for a raise, the room in your home that needs to be cleaned.

Every week you tell yourself that this time you'll summon discipline. And every week, you find a new way to avoid what you need to do.

You want to force yourself, but maybe that’s the problem. 

Old question: How do I force myself to do the thing I dread? 
Better question: How do I package the thing I dread with something I love?

Most people think that the inability to make change is a failure of discipline. But it’s more than you’re winning at avoidance.

Science suggests that when you dodge the task, you get a hit of relief. And that relief is what trains your brain to dodge it again.

The idea is known as “behavioral activation,” and it reveals that your mood follows your action. Most people wait to feel ready. But as Arnold says, you want to take action first, even if you’re not ready.

In extreme situations, such as clinically depressed adults, that flip produces a large drop in symptoms compared with doing nothing. And in average healthy adults, when researchers test activation-based approaches, well-being improves.

The move is to make the dreaded task the price of admission to something you already love.

Pick the thing you keep dodging. Then attach one reward you'd happily choose anyway, and let yourself have it only while the task is happening.

The empty inbox leads to the podcast you've been saving. Your least favorite chore becomes a meal that you love. There are endless options. And, eventually, when you do the behavior enough, you don’t need the reward. 

You're renting motivation from something that runs on its own steam.

You don't have to feel ready to start, either. That's what the activation research is really saying: begin, and the ready feeling catches up once you're moving.

So this week, pick the task. Then decide what good thing it now comes bundled with, and guard that pairing like a rule you don't break.

The Positive Corner of The Internet
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Publisher: Arnold Schwarzenegger​

Editors-in-chief: Adam Bornstein and Daniel Ketchell