Eating Chocolate can Improve Your Memory?

If you are still in school and think that’s a cool way to get some extra candy, its not going to happen. A scientific study by Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) scientists seems to say that naturally occurring bioactives found in cocoa tend to help reverse age-related memory decline in healthy older adults.

The concept of dietary intervention, which literally means changing your food habits, is not a new one. Many lifestyle diseases such as diabetes and obesity require a dietary intervention plan designed personally by a nutritionist. Older people also have to watch their food habits carefully in order to ensure that nothing goes wrong in their bodies due to lack of nutrition.

With old age simple cognitive abilities such as remembering the name of a friend of where you left the car keys becomes a problem. A specific part of the brain called the dentate gyrus is associated with this memory decline. Flavanols extracted from cocoa beans have shown a favorable response to neuron connections in mice in previous scientific studies.

In the CUMC experiment 37 healthy volunteers in the  age group of 50 to 69 were given either a high or low flavanol diet. The random selection saw people eating either 900mg or 10 mg flavanol in the day. It was found that the people on the high flavanol diet performed significantly better on the standardized memory test. Perhaps following this science project older people everywhere should start eating more chocolate?