It's time to quash those annoying myths about coffee

Coffee seems to have provided the press with endless opportunities for dramatic headlines - one minute it's poison, the next it's ambrosia and we are squirting it up our bottoms in expensive clinics.

The truth is that an awful lot of health reporting is sensationalist and inaccurate, and coffee often seems to be a victim of this. Much-quoted inaccuracies about it include the idea that it dehydrates you. It doesn't.

Caffeine is a mild diuretic, but the levels consumed in a cup of coffee or tea are no more diuretic than water.

Coffee in moderation doesn't cause heart problems, increase your risk of stroke or have any effect on blood pressure.

Women don't need to cut out coffee during a pregnancy and - coffee is not addictive.

Health fanatics always quote it as something to be avoided, especially when "detoxing" - a word that drives me potty with irritation. There is no such thing as detoxing.

The human race would not have survived for as long as it has if our feeble bodies accumulated toxins and had to be cleansed in a posh spa every six months.

We have evolved staggeringly efficient organs to cleanse our systems- our liver and kidneys - making the concept of detoxing utter quackery. I rant. Back to Alzheimer's.

It's the most common form of dementia, affecting around 700,000 people in the UK and rising, and it costs the UK around £17 billion a year to manage.

The markers of Alzheimer's are sticky clumps of abnormal protein in the brain called beta amyloid plaques.

This latest research was done on mice, genetically bred to have the mouse equivalent of the disease.

When they were given water with caffeine added to it their brains showed a 50 per cent reduction in levels of this protein.

After two months of this the caffeine-fuelled mice performed far better on tests of memory and thinking than mice given only water. Their memories were as sharp as those of healthy older mice without dementia.

We need to be careful, though. Mice are not human, caffeine is not coffee and only 55 mice were used. That, in study terms, is a very small sample.

The obvious questions to ask are why do so many older people develop the disease despite drinking copious cups of tea, and why do sufferers in care homes being given endless cups of tea and coffee not show any signs of improvement?

I am a fan and great supporter of coffee. It does have some fantastic health benefits and I hope this does turn out to be yet another.

But I am not a fan of over-zealous reporting and these headlines were a little premature in shouting about a cure for Alzheimer's.

But I guess Andy Murray had just been beaten, so we needed some good news.