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Two Cups of Hot Chocolate a Day Keeps Brain Healthy
– Reported, August 15, 2013
(Ivanhoe Newswire) Not only does chocolate boost heart health, but now researchers are saying the sweet stuff is keeping older chocoholics brain healthy and their thinking skills sharp.
The study at Harvard Medical School in Boston involved 60 people with an average age of 73 who did not have dementia. The participants drank two cups of hot cocoa a day for 30 days. They were given memory and thinking skills tests, and also ultrasound tests to measure blood flow to the brain.
At the start of the study, 18 participants had impaired blood flow. Those people had an 8.3 percent improvement in the blood flow to the working areas of the brain by the end of the study. They also improved their times on a test of working memory.
More work is needed to prove a link between cocoa, blood flow problems, and cognitive decline, Paul B. Rosenberg, MD, of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study, was quoted as saying, but this is an important first step that could guide future studies.
SOURCE: Neurology, August 2013
