The benefits of chocolate are emerging one by one.
Aside from reducing LDL cholesterol levels and reducing heart disease risk, chocolate can reportedly improve memory skills that people lose with age, according to the NY Times.
In a study that was published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, healthy people between the ages of 50 to 69 who drank a mixture high in antioxidants called cocoa flavanols for three months reportedly performed better on a memory test than people who drank a low-flavanol mixture. According to Dr. Scott A. Small, a neurology at Columbia University Medical Center and the study's senior author, on average, the improvement of high-flavanol drinkers reportedly meant they performed like people two or three decades younger on the study's memory task.
The benefits of chocolate in regards to memory doesn't end there. Researchers reportedly found increased function in an area of the brain's hippocampus called the dentate gyrus, which has been linked to a certain type of memory that allows you to remember where you parked the car or recall the face of someone you just met.
"Boy, this is really interesting to see it in three months. They got this really remarkable increase in a place in the brain that we know is related to age-related memory change," stated Dr. Steven DeKosky, a neurologist and visiting professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
Despite the positive results of the study, more research may be needed to confirm these specific benefits of chocolate.
"This well-designed but small study suggests the antioxidants found in cocoa can improve cognitive performance by improving blood flow to a certain region of the brain," stated Dr. Clare Walton, research manager at Alzheimer's Society, according to The Telegraph.
Walton continued, "The brain region is known to be affected in aging, but as yet we don't know whether these brain changes are involved in dementia."
Dr. Simon Ridley, head of research at Alzheimer's Research UK, reportedly warned that the recent findings are specific to cocoa beans, rather than chocolate bars that we frequently see in stores.
"This very small trial highlights some possible effects of flavanols found in cocoa beans over a short time period, but we'd need to see much longer, large-scale studies to fully understand whether a diet high in these flavanols could boost cognition in old age," stated Ridley.
