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 dementia like Alzheimer’s disease. However, 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 would be 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 made 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. “One participant, who had the memory of a 60-year-old at the start of the study, found that typical of a person aged 30 to 40,” notes Scott Small, the main author of the study, quoted by AFP. .
This better memorization capacity has resulted 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 effectively as we age.
Disappointed hope
Should we therefore conclude that a hot chocolate every day will allow you to keep at 60 a mind as lively as at 20? Normally not, answer the researchers. The amount of flavonols absorbed by an average consumer, even a “cacaomaniac”, remains in principle well below the dose administered to the study participants. They drank the equivalent of 300 grams of dark chocolate a day, more than a bar of chocolate. A little complicated on a daily basis, except to expose yourself to liver attack.
