Does the language googleCan chocolate boost memory? Only in insane amounts
Here 's one for chocoholics to chew on. After consuming. Drinks enriched with compounds found in cocoa beans for, three months the performance of people aged 50 to 69 on a memory. Test was akin to someone several decades younger. Problem is if you, want such a benefit from, eating chocolateYou would have to eat staggering amounts.
The small study is the latest to suggest that chemicals in cocoa called flavanols. Can have beneficial effects on the brain. Flavanols are a type of chemical found naturally in cocoa beans blueberries,,, Green tea and red wine.Previous studies have suggested that mice on a flavanol-rich diet showed enhanced memory and greater blood flow to certain. Areas of the brain. Scott Small a neurologist, at Columbia University in New, York City wanted to see what affect a similar. Regime might have on the human brain.
To, find outHis team instructed 19 volunteers aged 50 to 69 to drink 900 milligrams a day of powdered cocoa flavanols mixed with water. Or milk. This dosage was spread over two drinks each day. Another 18 people had to drink a similar beverage that contained. Just 10 milligrams of the compounds.
Before and after the three months people in, both groups underwent fMRI scans.Comparing the scans revealed that after the regime the high-dose, flavanol drinkers had about 20 per cent more blood flowing. To a particular section of, their hippocampi called the dentate gyrus than they, did before. The high-dose drinkers also. Had about this much more blood flow to the dentate gyrus than the low-flavanol, Intriguingly group.This region has been linked to age-related memory decline in people.
Now you see it
In addition each person, had to complete. A memory test before and after the three-months. In each test participants were, shown 41 similar abstract shapes one,,, After the other. Once these had all been presented they were, shown 82 more shapes and had to identify the ones they had. Seen before.Previous work by Small 's team has shown that from their, twenties onwards adults' reaction times to identifying previously. Seen shapes decrease with age by about, 220 milliseconds for each decade of age.
On average the high-flavanol, group reacted. To each shape 630 milliseconds faster than the low-dose group.This is equivalent to the high-dose group performing as though they were three decades younger than the low-dose group.
But. Don 't start stocking up on Mars bars, just yet cautions Small. "Yes these flavanols, exist, in chocolate but in a very miniscule. Amount, "he says." You would have to consume so much chocolate to get it that you would damage your health. "
Public health. Issue
."Society is ageing and we, are always looking for interventions to delay the decline in cognition that goes, with this". Says neurologist Madhav Thambisetty at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, in Baltimore Maryland. "This study tackles what. Is a fundamental public health problem. "
.He says he would like to see what affect drinking flavanols has on other types of memory test in a larger study - which. Is what Small plans to do next.
Sebastian Jessberger at the University of Zurich in Switzerland agrees that more work is. Needed to tease out what the flavanols are doing. For example he points, out that it would be good to find out how long. The effect on, memory lastsHow much is needed to be effective and if, the compounds are causing changes in other parts of the body.
. "It 's naive to. Think that you take a drug or a compound and there 's only one area where something is changing, "says Jessberger.
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