NEW YORK – Drinking two cups of hot chocolate a day may help older people keep their brains healthy and their thinking skills sharp, according to a study published in the August 7 online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
The study involved 60 people with an average age of 73 who did not have dementia. The participants drank two cups of hot cocoa per day for 30 days and did not consume any other chocolate during the study. They were given tests of memory and thinking skills. They also had ultrasounds tests to measure the amount of blood flow to the brain during the tests.
“We’re learning more about blood flow in the brain and its effect on thinking skills,” said study author Farzaneh A Sorond, of Harvard Medical School in Boston. “As different areas of the brain need more energy to complete their tasks, they also need greater blood flow. This relationship, called neurovascular coupling, may play an important role in diseases such as Alzheimer’s.”
Of the 60 participants, 18 had impaired blood flow at the start of the study. Those people had an 8.3% improvement in the blood flow to the working areas of the brain by the end of the study, while there was no improvement for those who started out with regular blood flow.
The people with impaired blood flow 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. But this is an important first step that could guide future studies,” said Paul B Rosenberg, of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore.
