To keep a good memory, eat chocolate! The trick seems too good to be true at a time when researchers are struggling to find treatments for dementias like Alzheimer’s disease. Yet a serious study published in the British journal Nature Neuroscience suggests that a diet rich in cocoa would be useful in reversing the natural decline in cognitive abilities associated with age. The protective virtues of chocolate are based on flavonols, antioxidant compounds, present in the plant.
Researchers at Columbia University in the United States tested the impact of cocoa by asking 37 volunteers aged 50 to 69 to drink either a high dose of flavanols (900 mg) or a very low dose (10 mg). The drinks were prepared by a major American candy bar manufacturer.
As a result, after three months the volunteers who forced the dose on cocoa presented better scores on memory tests. “A participant, who had the memory of a sixty-year-old at the beginning of the study, found that typical of a person between 30 and 40 years old”, notes Scott Small, the main author of the study, quoted by AFP .
This better memory capacity is reflected in the brain by a significant increase in blood volume in the dentate gyrus, an area of the hippocampus associated with memory capacities and which functions less efficiently as we age.
Disappointed hope
Should we therefore conclude that a hot chocolate every day will allow to keep at 60 years a mind as lively as at 20 years? Normally no, say the researchers. The quantity of flavonols absorbed by an average consumer, even “cocoa addict”, remains in principle well below the dose administered to the participants of the study. They drank the equivalent of 300 grams of dark chocolate per day, or more than one bar of chocolate. A little complicated on a daily basis, except to expose yourself to a liver attack.
