Caramelicious Lattes and Dementia: A Research Study

This is an age where I have odd things haunt me in the middle of the night. Big things. Big, nasty things. Like, will I get osteoporosis? What if I lose all my money and end up in a tent down by the river? How can I bear it if my son marries someone I loathe? Will I eventually develop dementia? Do I have anything in the freezer for dinner?

I never used to worry about this kind of thing. Okay, maybe sometimes I’d spend a little time fretting over that freezer thing, largely because it’s hard to figure out what will take less than ten minutes to fix and my son would get tired of peanut butter, banana, and crushed potato-chip sandwiches. (Hey, don’t scoff till you’ve tried one.) But the rest of it seemed a long dreamscape away.

Not anymore.

So, last night, I perked up when I read about a recent dementia study. It seems researchers in France have concluded that women who drink 300 milligrams or more of caffeine each day are 33 percent more likely to retain their ability to remember words, and 18 percent less likely to lose their nonverbal memory than those who drank less. I’m not sure what nonverbal memory is, but it sounds like something I want to keep.

Hot dog. Finally, I can claim that a $4 Caramelicious Latte from Scooters is a health drink. But before I could be entirely reassured, I needed to figure out how many milligrams of caffeine was in one cup of coffee or one Diet Coke or one Caramelicious Latte from Scooters. Damn French. Once upon a third grade, I’d memorized that pesky metric system. Remember doing that? Everyone thought it was the coming thing, but it never arrived. If you don’t remember it, it’s because you’re too young or haven’t been drinking enough coffee.

I finally figured it out, though, after converting milligrams to the... cup... system. (And into pony kegs for you Texans.) And, I can now confidently tell you that the average cup of coffee has about 100 milligrams of caffeine. A pony keg? It has a lot more. And a Caramelicious Latte from Scooters? Does it matter?

Now, that may seem reassuring—-you can retain the ability to remember words for as long as you live merely by downing only three cups of coffee a day. Except, I’m here to tell you that I drink plenty more coffee than that, and I forget words all the time. Maybe they mean only some words.

If that's the case, I hope four of mine are Caramelicious Latte from Scooters. Then I won't mind that tent by the river.